Sometimes They Forget
by cowgirlfromhell
Summary: Takes place after NRFTW. Be they a little more hard-bitten, a little more damaged, I just needed them back and working together again. Sam and Dean meet another class of hunter.
1. Chapter 1

Sometimes They Forget

"Pain, pain, go away, come again some other day."

"He says it like a mantra," it said in disgust, slicing his skin open from his neck to his crotch with a blackened fingernail, "Over and over and over and over."

"Stupid. Stupid," another said strumming the taught chains like a guitar, vibrating the spikes in his wrists and ankles the great hooks in his shoulder and side.

"Pain, pain, go away, come again some other day."

"He used to say other things. Cry out for his brother, his mother, his father," still another said pushing a burning stick deep into his side, "for God."

Pain, pain, pain, pain," he panted writhing away from the fire until his arms pulled free of the spikes, shredding his wrists.

The wounds healed miraculously and one of them drove the spikes through fresh skin and bone again, blood spurting furiously.

He didn't scream, he only chanted.

"He used to scream until he couldn't anymore, choking on his own blood."

"He doesn't belong!"

They heard and they looked up from the body, craning deformed, twisted, leathery necks, searching with bloody eyes for whoever had spoken out…but there were too many of them.

They had lined up to torment him, many hundreds so it was impossible to tell where the voice had come from but when they looked back he was no longer strung up but sitting slumped against a rock.

The rock was as good a place as any, one of them thought. Fisting up long, gnarled talons it stabbed them into the wound on his shoulder and twisted but he didn't move, only grunted and continued to sit, head bowed, whispering his mantra. Having no where to go he never moved from the rock, surrounded by the crawling masses bent on causing him pain, crushing him, suffocating him day after day, year after year.

"He doesn't belong here!"

They heard the words again and the voice agitated them and they crowded in closer to protect him, like a pride of lions around a fresh kill threatened by hyenas.

"Martyr!"

This time he heard the word and his head snapped up, dead eyes staring ahead and they moved away from him, hissing, snarling, shoving at one another to get away.

"Pain, pain…" he said and lowered his head again.

"He doesn't belong here!"

They scattered like carrion only to return when they thought it safe and a cacophonous roar rose up as they screamed and cried out in anguish.

He was gone.

Sam Winchester shot straight up into a sitting position on the bed, eyes wide, gasping for air, the coppery taste of blood in his mouth. He had been dreaming, using forbidden powers, honing his skills, stretching his limitations.

The tousled redhead who had been sleeping peacefully beside him stirred and stretched out a hand and touched his arm.

"Bad dream?' she asked in a sleepy voice.

Sam looked at her for a moment and opened his mouth to ask her why she was still there but his voice was gone. Instead of words blood gushed from his mouth and the girl started to scream.

Bobby Singer had two secrets.

Secret one was that when he had told Sam it was Dean's body in the shroud, he had lied.

Secret two was that he could bring someone back from the dead.


	2. Chapter 2

The Impala slowly rolled to a stop outside a rusty but still serviceable wrought iron fence surrounding the small country cemetery. The newspaper article said that Father Benjamin Clements, deceased, had been buried there among his flock but his parishioners insisted that he still walked among them searching for sinners in need of absolution. Apparently the good father thought his work on earth was not done but, instead of a couple of Our Fathers and a Hail Mary, the priest ripped out the sinner's throat.

It was a pretty harsh penance even for a sinner like himself, Dean Winchester thought, as he unlocked the trunk and pulled out a shovel, a small duffel bag and a can of gasoline. He made his way toward the graves while his brother Sam made his way across the wildly growing, weedy lawn and walked up the steps of the parish house. After the death of Father Clements, the cemetery caretaker, a refuted sinner of the first degree, had moved into the small cottage and just a few days later had died a grisly death. No one else had dared to go inside since then but when Sam knocked anyway, he was unpleasantly surprised when someone answered.

"Come in."

"What the hell?"Sam asked aloud when he heard a woman's voice. Had someone really been brave enough or stupid enough to actually take up residence in the little run down house, he wondered, as he opened the door. Out of habit he glanced down at the threshold and found it clearly marked with a fat line of salt...that had been broken purposely. The hunter looked up and saw a woman standing in the harshly lit living room and, thinking she might possible be trapped inside with Father Clements, he rushed in to rescue her…from herself?

"What took you so long?" the tall brunette asked as she walked over to the front door and closed it behind him.

Sam raised an eyebrow, shrugged and said, "What can I say? Traffic was a bitch."

"Well, it's almost dark and Father Clements should be stopping by for coffee and a slice of repentance pie. It'll take time for your brother to find his grave and dig it up so we need to lure him inside and make sure he doesn't get out."

Sam looked at her questioningly and told her, "I seem to be at a loss here but just who in the hell are you?"

"Just a hunter, same as you."

"_My ass,"_ Sam thought and asked rhetorically, "And you knew we were coming?"

"I sent you the GPS co-ords and the newspaper link."

Sam and Dean had both thought the tip had come from Bobby but what the hell. A hunt was a hunt.

"Well, since we're _finally_ here Dean and I can give you a hand."

"You'll be a great help," she replied a touch sarcastically and winked at him, "The bad father needs a reason to come inside, say someone who's in need of absolution. Dean would have been my first choice but you'll do nicely."

Sam wasn't unduly surprised when the brunette pulled a gun from her belly pack and pointed it at him. Nope, he wasn't surprised at all, just really pissed off and, when she motioned to an old captain's chair sitting in the center of the room, he rolled his eyes and huffed.

"No need to get bitchy," she told him, "I'm just baiting the trap."

Sam looked up at the ceiling at the devil's trap and sighed. He crossed the room and obediently sat in the chair. She bound his wrists to the arms with strips of leather then patted him on the head.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked, "You might need my help."

"Not really," she said dismissing his offer, "You'll be safe as long as you stay in that chair and Dean…he'll be safe enough if Father Clements doesn't get downwind of his multitude of sins."

"Yeah, like you're an angel," Sam said petulantly and she laughed.

"Compared to you two?"

Their verbal sparring quickly came to an end when shuffling steps sounded on the porch and someone or something came a knocking. The hunter returned the concealed weapon to it's holster and checked Sam's bindings once more and, before heading toward the door, said flippantly, "Our guest is here, honey."

She was seemingly unconcerned with who or what might be on the other side and with pretty good cause. A sleek, black, 8 shot, Benelli M3 Super 90 semi-automatic shotgun with a folding butt stock, pistol grip and ghost ring sights rested against the wall easily within her reach.

The knocking grew impatient and when she finally did open the door it was wide enough for Sam to see out onto the porch and he physically drew back in the chair. The creature formerly known as Father Benjamin Clements was dressed in a blood and gore smeared black cassock. His face looked more like melted plastic than skin and Sam thought he saw the semblance of a smile as opaque, puss colored eyes stared into the room, nose sniffing the air as if he were God's own sin seeking hellhound.

Stopping in mid sniff, Father Clements turned his head toward the graveyard and dragged in a mucous laden breath and Sam's heart began to hammer in his chest. "_God Damn it, Dean." _Sam cursed his brother for being so damned immoral and, though much of the sinning Dean Winchester did was purely to survive, it seemed the priest wouldn't consider any extenuating circumstances as he started to turn away from the door. "_Come on Dean, dig faster,"_ Sam urged silently then, as the priest seemed to ignore him, suddenly shouted out, "In here! I'm a big time sinner."

The woman stood against the wall and thought, _"I don't exactly know what you are, Sam Winchester, but I think sinner may be the least of it."_

The priest seemed to know that Sam Winchester was a lightweight compared to the 'gravedigger' down the road and at that point was more interested in going to the graveyard than in coming inside the house…until the woman spoke up.

"Father Clements, have you come to hear my confession?" she asked stepping from behind the door, shotgun in hand.

The priest never hesitated. He raised his hand to point a twisted black finger at her and came to the doorway and said in a deep, cracking, guttural voice, "My child, your soul is in terrible peril. I will hear your confession." The hunter backed away and Father Clements finally entered the room.

"Bless me Father for I have sinned," she said drawing the ghoul even farther in, "It's been three years since my last confession."

Raising his face toward the heavens, slobber ran down his chin and a look of pure ecstasy shown on his face because he knew exactly what she was going to say. He already knew her sins as she started out slowly working up to the really big finish.

"I used the name of the Lord in vain more times than I can count," she confessed ever moving, the priest following along, "I caused suffering and injury to so many people that I can't remember their names or even their faces."

The priest took a few more shuffling steps toward her rubbing his hands together almost in glee while Sam sat silently, never moving a muscle hoping that Father Creepy Beyond Words wouldn't turn his attention to him afterall. If he stayed quiet he would be safe for the moment but the woman was taking a terrible risk with only the shotgun to protect her.

Sam knew the Benelli held eight shells in the under barrel tube magazine and that they could be delivered in rapid succession but would the eight rounds be enough to scatter the demon spirit to the winds and could she continue to hold it off until Dean had a chance salt and burn the bones?

For long agonizing minutes Father Clements' shuffling gate was the only noise in the room until the demon grew impatient and hissed out, "I can't absolve you of your sins unless you confess."

What more did he want from her Sam wondered? You'd think that pain, suffering and general mayhem, not to mention the cursing, would be enough to satisfy any man of the cloth but this spirit evidently wanted more and, much to his dismay, the woman delivered.

"I know Father," she assured him.

The priest drew in another noisy, ragged breath and as he passed him by, Sam noticed that he seemed to have an erection tenting his cassock. "That is so wrong on so many levels," he whispered in disgust. Father Clements turned to the sound of his voice and Sam, guessing the priest was now staring at him, tried to become as small as his six foot four frame would allow.

"I'm not finished, Father," the woman reminded the ghoul in a loud voice wondering why all demons seemed to suffer from ADD.

The priest turned to look in her direction and started to move slowly toward her again. They circled Sam, Father Clements avoiding the Devil's trap, until the two of them were back where they had started, at the doorway. The hunter stopped and pushed the salt with her boot tip to form a solid line again. He was in and not getting back out if she could help it. She brought the Benelli up to her shoulder and said, "I've committed the most heinous of all sins Father, I killed my own children."

Sam looked at the woman and her face was emotionless, her eyes unblinking as they stared at the priest and he decided that she either had the world's best poker face or she had just told the absolute unvarnished truth. Suddenly he was more afraid of her than of the priest.

But her confession was music to the bad father's ears and he screeched in maddened joy and flew at her, hands outstretched, claws ready to rip and tear, to take retribution in God's name. The shotgun exploded thunderously and Father Clements disappeared in a cloud only to return a few moments later, crouched on the floor, ready to fly at her once again.

Sam counted six reports in measured succession as rock salt and silver sprayed across the room. The smell of spent gunpowder and the shrieks of the demon filled the air time and time again until Father Clements suddenly vanished in a fountain of flames and all was quiet except for the woman's heavy breathing and the ringing in his ears.


	3. Chapter 3

Back at the cemetery, his mission complete, Dean Winchester threw the shovel and gas can into the trunk of the Impala and slammed the lid shut. "I'll help you dig," he said mimicking a girl's voice as he stomped to the driver's door, "Yeah, sure you will, you effin slacker. Not a phone call, nothin'." He wiped the sweat from his face on his t-shirt tail and slid behind the wheel of the Chevy to make the short drive back to the parish house, a distance easily covered by his long legged brother had Sam deemed it worth his while to come and help him dig. "But no, he couldn't be bothered," Dean groused to himself.

The only thing that was going to save Sammy from a beat down was that the grave had been so fresh, the dirt so loosely packed, that the digging had been fairly quick and easy. But he wasn't going to tell that to Sam. Parking the Impala in the cottage's weed filled driveway, Dean got out and circled around to the trunk. He picked up the sawed off shotgun and hefted it in one hand. Father Clements should be a not so fond memory but a guy could never be too careful, especially with the midnight black Charger parked behind the house. The one with the reflective tinted windows and the HEMI. How could thay have missed it and where had he seen it before?

He loaded up two shells, put a couple in his pocket for good measure, and trotted up the front steps. "Sammy! Sam, did we…" he pushed open the door open and stopped mid step and mid sentence.

Sam Winchester sat, tied to an old oak chair, directly beneath a devil's trap, in a room where every opening was lined with salt and where the air still reeked of sulfur. The woman in the room basically ignored Dean as she walked into and out of the devil's trap unabated, shotgun in hand. There was no way she was a demon so she must be a hunter…or a serial killer.

She was about five ten and buff, to say the least. She resembled one of those women wrestlers he loved to watch on TV only her tits were real under her black sleeveless t-shirt. Her long legs were covered in subdued camouflaged cargo pants, the pockets bulging with the tools of her trade while her dark brown hair was pulled back in a severe utilitarian ponytail, the top of her head was covered in a black bandana.

"Honey, I'm home," Dean said and walked the rest of the way into the room. Salt crunched beneath his boots and the woman just silently stared at him, her dark brown eyes cold, her mouth grimly set. _"Leaning toward serial killer,"_ he thought and lifting his chin toward Sam added, "Ah, I'm here for my brother."

"Hey Dean, this is...well, she hasn't exactly told me her name," Sam interjected with an exaggerated sigh.

Sam's voice was pleasant enough but Dean knew his brother was only seconds away from pitching a bitchy fit. He wanted to laugh but something in the woman's eyes stopped him.

"She kind of saved your ass," Sam continued, "and then took Father Clements out...after using me as bait!"

"He was already dead, just didn't know enough to lie down and I found your boy here skulking around the place."

"I told you I was looking for Father Clements," Sam huffed and pulled on his bindings petulantly.

The woman simply laughed at him, the leather on his wrists keeping him restrained and pretty well harmless, and came back with, "And I told you he was my kill."

"I salted and burned his bones," Dean chimed in with a boyish grin.

She looked him over and said with a smile that didn't even come close to reaching her eyes, "Well, then, you win."

Dean's smile faded quickly. "And what did he mean, _you_ saved _my_ ass?"

"The padre was looking for sinners and when he got a whiff of you, man, I almost lost him."

"Then how'd you get him to stay? Surly not with Boy Scout Sammy here," Dean said pointing to his brother.

"You don't even wanna know," Sam said with a bitch face and added with finality, "Just get me the hell out of here!"

Dean looked up at the devil's trap then down expectantly at the woman.

She tilted her head and shrugged her shoulders. "I had to find out which side of the coin your brother falls on, halos or horns."

"Sam's not a demon. A devil's trap doesn't affect him and he pours salt on everything he eats, even his Captain Crunch," Dean said convincingly enough though he was anything but convinced. He himself had pierced the veil and every once in a while he saw something in his brother's face that scared him shitless.

He'd said nothing to either Sam or to Bobby. It was just one of many secrets they kept from one another since he'd come back. They'd fashioned a kind of don't ask, don't tell arrangement independently of one another. Sam kept his own council while Dean, too afraid to sit down and really talk to his brother, kept his mouth shut rather than admit that he thought he might be going insane. And so life went on.

"So untie him and we can call it a draw and all get the hell out of here."

"Not so fast, cowboy. You two may have come here to send the bad father to perdition but I'm here for an entirely different reason."

Sam raised his eyes to the devil's trap above and wanted to scream. _"No, no, not the other shoe! There's always another friggin' shoe. Come on Sammy, it's just a little salt and burn. We can do it in our sleep._"

Dean didn't like the sound of the hunter's words and he knew full well he'd probably hate her revelation. Rolling his eyes he sighed theatrically and asked, "Then why are you here?"

"To take into custody and deliver one Sam Winchester of course," she told him smiling the ice smile again. She pulled a 15 shot, 9mm, Sig Sauer P226 Platinum Elite from her belly pack and aimed it at Dean.

"A cop," Dean sighed admiring the gun even though it was pointed directly at him, "Lemme see your badge."

"Like you two haven't used fake IDs before," she said and rolled up on the balls of her feet. Her right leg throbbing and her scars began to burn and she longed for relief. "Besides if I were a cop, _you'd_ be my number one with a bullet, so to speak."

The Impala's glove box was full of false identities and squirming in the stiffed back chair Sam added, "She's got a point about the fake ID's, Dean."

"Okay, you're probably not a cop. So who wants him?"

"Let's just say I work for whoever pays and someone ponied up a bundle for your baby brother."

"A bounty hunter," Dean said acerbically, "Another bitch out for whatever she can get."

"This is crap," Sam chimed in, "Come on, take her out already, I gotta whiz."

Ignoring his brother, Dean watched as the woman moved her full weight first to the right leg then back to the left and deduced she was either in pain or amped on something or both. "So you trade in humans, huh?"

"Not exclusively."

"Whatever," he grumbled, "Then you must know Bela Talbot, birds of a feather and all that crap." Dean tried to engage her in conversation hoping she would lower her guard.

Reading him like a comic book, she watched him intently. His small talk merely annoyed her but she did remember Bela. Bela, Bela, Bela. She could still see the joy on the snotty Brit's face when Bela had ripped the trinket from around the old woman's neck, smiling smugly, holding the bauble lovingly in her hand, thinking wrongly that her lame threats had caused her to hand over the woman to her.

What the con-artist didn't realize was that the power to literally scare someone to death hadn't come from the talisman at all but from kindly Mrs. Aaronguardt herself and, after being paid handsomely by her, grandma had most likely ended up ashes to ashes and dust to dust while Bela had ended up with a gaudy piece of costume jewelry.

"Third rate profiteer and yeah, I ran into her a couple of times over the years," the bounty hunter told him, "I heard she got sloppy, let herself go to the dogs."

"That's pretty cold even for a money grubbing skank like you."

"Well, as I told Sammy here, I'm just a hunter, same as you."

Dean barked out a harsh laugh and, amazed at her audacity, told her, "A bounty hunter's pretty far removed from a demon hunter." He would have loved nothing more than to get into it with the bitch but she was evidently having none of it.

She told him simply, "We can debate the merits of hunting for a cash reward in the here and now versus hunting for a reward in the hereafter another time. I've got a deadline, with the emphasis on dead."

"Kids!" Sam's annoyance grew as he listened to them snipe at one another and he really did have to piss like the preverbal racehorse but they continued to ignore him. Dean took a step toward her and to counter; she stepped into the devil's trap and snugged the Sig up to his temple.

"Okay, okay." Dean backed off and raised his hands

She smiled and ruffled Sam's hair and he jerked his head away in annoyance.

"Before you take him, bitch, tell me why demons would hire you bring Sam to them?"

The hunter lifted an eyebrow now thoroughly amazed at Dean's audacity. He'd called her a bitch and expected answers? Why not? Answers wouldn't help him anyway. "I can go places they can't and who said I'm working for demons?"

"So, why would hunters hire you?" Dean demanded, her answer nothing but cryptic bullshit.

"I can go places hunters don't dare…and there is that little issue of the devil's gate. There were some pretty hard feelings…but I never discuss my employers."

"You have Sam pretty well protected from the dark side so I'm guessing you're kissing demon ass right now," Dean guessed.

She snorted. "How do you tell the players without a program these days?" she said looking directly at Sam then shrugged her shoulders, "It doesn't really matter what you think. I need to get on down the road so put down the sawed off."

Dean, figuring he had no recourse, put down his weapon then asked "Okay to untie him now?" He assumed he would be taking his brother's place and was surprised when he heard her say, "I think not."

She picked up his gun, tucked it under her arm and moved her gun barrel from the vicinity of Sam's head to directly over Dean's heart. Instead of being loaded with rock salt and silver, the Sig held fifteen 9mm fang faces and could spit them all out in under a second she told him then added, "I'm only being paid to bring you in."

"Me?" Dean laughed incredulously, "Who in hell would want me?"

"Exactly," she said with a smirk.

Goddamn it! He'd walked right into it, was knee deep in shit and it was his turn to look at her with repugnance, "I thought you said it was Sam you wanted."

"I lied," she confessed with a laugh.

"And I'm not leaving here without him," Dean insisted.

She raised an eyebrow and wondered, _"Does he not see my big ass gun?"_

Sam broke in and assured his brother, "It's okay, Dean. I'll catch up. Besides you'll probably kill each other before you go a mile and Dean, she really doesn't play well with others."

They spoke as if she weren't standing there holding a gun on them but she didn't loose her cool, didn't even come close, and to make her point she grabbed Sam by the hair and yanked his head back, leaned down, got right up in his face and said, "If I even catch a glimpse of you, I will kill him. My contract stipulates dead or alive and dead is always easier. Do you understand what I'm telling you, baby brother?"

Dean huffed at her snotty endearment and wanted to punch her lights out.

She could see the anger in his face, feel his frustration but didn't give a rat's ass. She had however heard rumors about the one in the chair and as long as she had his brother, she hoped Sam wouldn't do anything stupid, like flay the skin off of her bones with just a look. She straightened back up and took a quick look around, "There's just one more thing I need to do here."

She pulled a silver flask from one of the pockets in her Kevlar vest and unscrewed the lid. She dumped some of the clear liquid on the leather straps binding Sam's hands.

"Holy water only works on demons, you dumb bitch," Dean said caustically.

He was telling her something she already knew full well and, tipping the flask back, she proceeded to take a drink of the Ketel One vodka within it. "Wet leather tends to shrink when it dries," she said smiling and returned the flask to her vest pocket, "If somebody doesn't find him pretty quick he'll probably loose both hands, you dumb hump."

The stun-gun she'd surreptitiously pulled from the same pocket as the flask shot out and dug in deep, through his t-shirt and into his skin and she sent a charge of 300,000 volts into him dropping him to his knees. She let up but when he tried to get back up, bloody murder in his eyes, she zapped him a second time, then a third, until he finally passed out.


	4. Chapter 4

The car Dean had thought he'd seen somewhere before was a midnight black Dodge Charger police vehicle with a 5.7-liter HEMI V-8 engine that went from zero to insane in six seconds. Inside, along with all the firepower and high tech goodies one could imagine, was the requisite cage but this particular one was crafted of reinforced steel and plated in sterling silver. As he came to and sat up, Dean noticed teeth marks gouged into the cage bars in spots, a devil's trap burned into the leather headliner and silver eye bolts jutting out of the door frames for restraints.

The engine was already running and the bounty hunter turned on the sound system and Breaking Benjamin blasted out over the speakers. Scrunching up his face Dean called from the back seat, "Don't you have any classic rock there, Evil Angel?"

"Do I look like I'm into retro?" she shouted back.

"Did I ever tell you I spent some time with the inspiration for this song?"

"So?" the hunter asked not really giving a rat's ass.

"She's gone," he told her and he could see her roll her eyes in the rear view mirror as she drove through the grass around the parish cottage, spinning out when she reached the gravel driveway. Swearing to himself that he would kill her if any rocks hit the Impala, he sighed and leaned back against the seat and lifted up his feet to push on the cage wall.

"It's strong enough to hold a Wendigo so save yourself the trouble," she shouted and ended their quality time by turning up the volume even more.

They drove for miles, the music so loud that it was impossible for them to converse or for him to bait her but it wasn't loud enough to keep him awake. He eventually dropped off only to be awakened some time later by the kiss of a cold nickel barrel to his temple. The sun was just breaking the horizon and the pink neon motel sign still blinked "Paradise Motel" and "Vacancy" over and over again as the bounty hunter leaned in and snapped a pair of handcuffs around his wrists. She pulled him to the edge of the seat and snapped shackles to his ankles while the motel manager and his wife looked on.

"I gave you the end unit in case there's any trouble, Agent Scully," the portly, balding manager said. He then turned to his wife and added, "See, I told you that show was based on real folks."

The wife piped up and said, "But he looks like such a nice young man," and Dean smiled cheesily.

"Thanks again, folks," the bounty hunter said with a smile, "If I have any trouble I'll try to shoot him against the outside wall so no one gets hurt when the bullet goes through his head."

The owners of the motel looked startled and backed away to give them a wide berth as the woman dragged Dean out of the car and pushed him roughly toward the door marked with the number ten. Once they were inside she shoved him toward one of the beds and pushed him down on it.

"I just love it when a woman takes charge," he told her then yelped when she yanked on his arm.

Releasing one of his wrists she cuffed him to the bed frame and walked over to the window. She pulled the heavy drapes closed and stood, white knuckled, holding onto the small table.

"Listen…" Dean began.

She whirled on him and in a menacing voice told him, "You don't need to shut up Winchester, you need to shut the **fuck** up."

_Sheesh_, he thought and looked closely at her haggard features, the deep purple shadows under her eyes, the creases and the thin white lines around her mouth as she pressed her lips together and wondered what in the hell was wrong with her. He continued to watch as she removed the bandana and the band holding her hair back with hands now visibly trembling. She ran them roughly through her hair, each breath hitching badly and he half-assed wondered if she was going to drop dead right in front of him and leave him to starve to death chained to the bed.

The bounty hunter glanced at his concerned face and wondered if she had made a mistake. Knowing that the small town in which they'd stopped was a vortex where hellhounds thrived and flourished all around them, should she have driven on? Maybe so, she conceded, but the need to stop had arisen…as much for herself as for Sam Winchester. She needed a nice hot shower and a fix and Sam needed time to catch up.

Turning her back to him Dean watched wide-eyed as she pulled her t-shirt over her head and tossed it onto the floor. Her muscles rippled enticingly as she lifted her arms, the wings on her back undulating. "Oh, wow," he said softly because, tattooed in black on her back was a pair of wings. Not the baby cherub wings found on some goth girls but a full-on set of 'Michael the Archangel' wings, sweeping from her shoulder blades up to her shoulders and back down again to her ass. Inside the mirrored sweep of wings, something had been scribed but he couldn't make it out.

"God damn, you really are an evil angel," he said staring at the elaborate ink work, "Or at least a masochistic one. That must have hurt like hell."

_More than you'll ever know, numb nuts,_ she thought to herself, amazed sometimes at how little it hurt to think about it anymore. She'd been told that time heals all wounds but for her, the lack of psychological pain probably only meant that she was that much closer to insanity, a path she'd been traveling as swiftly and as surely as far back as she could remember.

Receiving no answer Dean sniped, "From the looks of your arms I'd say you're pretty used to needles," and when he got no reaction he scooted closer to the end of the bed to goad her more. "What's the tat say Angel? Some angsty emo bullshit?"

"Fuck you, Winchester," she said over her shoulder.

"I would have preferred 'I heart Dean'."

"What an absolute dick," she said under her breath and turned to face him, her breasts swaying gently.

"Fuck me," he said huskily in appreciation, his mouth suddenly gone dry.

They were real all right and she smiled at the look of pure lust that shown on his face and stepped closer to him. She was pleasantly surprised when he didn't give an inch. She hated weakness of any kind. "I'd like to fuck you, baby," she purred and for a moment Dean Winchester felt like a condemned man who was about to get a last meal made entirely of ass, tits and fantastic sex but, as with every other aspect of this hunt, his last meal turned to shit when she added, "But I'd rather fuck you up."

The force of her backhand took him by surprise and snapped his head back viciously. He cursed at her and lifted his arm to wiped his mouth. He then smiled at her showing bloodied teeth. "Seriously Angel, what are you anyway? Some kind of Amazonian man-eater?" he asked and as an afterthought added, "You don't mind if I call you Angel, do you?"

_No wonder he was still alive and not in hell_, she thought as she grabbed her backpack and dropped it on the table. With his verbal diarrhea he'd probably been booted out the first day. Opening up the small silver case she'd fished out of the pack, she laid out the drug paraphernalia inside it on the table. The bounty hunter picked up one of the vials and sank one of the needles in deep, filled it and then withdrew it. She thumped the syringe with he fingernail and squirted out the tiniest bit of the liquid to clear any air bubbles. At her pay grade she could afford the medical grade morphine, as much as she needed, but she still hated to waste any of it.

Wrapping the bright yellow elastic band around her upper arm she pulled it tight with her teeth and carefully stabbed the needle into a vain. She plunged the contents home and released the tourniquet then glanced at the knuckles on her hand where his teeth had split the skin and wondered if she'd need a tetanus shot or, looking at the murderous expression on her prisoner's face, a rabies shot.

Taking a deep cleansing breath she told him, "To answer your questions you can call me whatever you want. I've met plenty of people who have such piss poor opinions of themselves that they give everyone nicknames to devalue them and you seem to fill the bill, Skippy. And I like men just fine. I just can't stomach hunters." She leaned a butt cheek against the table as the drug began to work its wonders and closed her eyes. Taking another deep breath, his irritating voice broke through her moment of drug induced Zen. _God, would he never shut up?_

"You can't stomach them but you work for hunters. You're taking me to 'em."

"You can put away your fishing pole, Dean. You have no idea where I'm taking you or who I'm taking you to," she told him then suggested, "Anyway I might just save myself a ton grief and kill you in your sleep. Of course that'll invalidate my contract...and I won't be able to write off my mileage."

"So you do have to keep me alive, don't you Angel?" he deduced wrongly and she told him so.

"No...I...Don't. I'm sure some hunter would be willing to pay handsomely to display your fat head on the wall of some lair, say some shit hole like Harvelle's? Oh yeah, I forgot."

She smiled and he thought of Ash and the others and, glaring at her, spit out, "A lot of good people died that day."

"The only good hunter is a dead hunter I always say."

Dean pursed his lips; something in his memory gnawing at him and then heard the mental snap of fingers. "That's where I've seen you. Harvelle's. Ellen said you'd been hanging around."

"She alright?"

"Yeah, she made it out alive."

"Too bad." Angel moved away from the table and over to the bed. The soothing effects of the morphine masking her ever-present pain, making her feel halfway human again. Taking the key to the handcuffs, she broke open the cuff and pulled him to his feet. She then yanked him into the small bathroom, the leg shackles tripping him up as he shuffled his way to stand in front of the toilet. "Use it now if you have to otherwise I want you on your knees and hugging that shitter for all your worth."

He should have expected as much from her. "You're not gonna Boondock Saints me, are you?" he whined. The thought of wrapping his arms around an arguably clean toilet bowl nauseated him but he had to hand it to her. It was about the only anchor in the motel room he couldn't dismantle or break to get to her, given enough time.

"Yeah, I am," she said pushing him down on his knees.

_You absolute mega bitch,_ he thought as he hunched over and she cuffed his hands together behind the bowl then wondered how much longer it would take his brother to find them and get him loose. The sound of the shower caught Dean's attention and he craned his neck to watch as Angel stripped off her pants and the tiny black thong she wore underneath. She didn't seem to care that he watched and left the shower curtain bundled against the wall so she could keep an eye on him. Evidently she'd seen the part where Conner McManus had ripped the toilet from its moorings.

When she was through, she stepped up over the tub's edge to grab one of the paper-thin towels and it was then that he saw the scars. They were old, silver and quite wicked looking and he knew of only one thing that could make scars like that…hellhounds. Tilting his head back he continued to ask her questions not only to gather information but also to see the look on her face. "You seem to know all about us, I mean about hunters and demons yet you work both ends against the middle. Are you that cold blooded and money grubbing that you don't even care if evil wins out in the end?"

"I don't give a flying fuck which side wins or loses. I figure it'll all get sorted out in the end and my killing a demon here or a hunter there won't make a bit of difference to anyone but me and my bank account."

"And you don't care where you end up spending eternity? You don't want to be with your family?"

"I won't ever see my family again," she hissed between clenched teeth leaning down next to him, "Now shut up before I punch your ticket."

And that's that, he figured and tried again to find a comfortable position. It was useless. His back muscles cramped, his biceps burned but he refused to lay his head down on the toilet seat.

She watched him squirm trying to find some relief and considered letting him stay there. Against her better judgment, she was going to cuff him back to the bed while she slept but first she wanted to get dressed and see just where in the world Carmen Winchester was.

"You're not gonna leave me here are you?" he complained loudly when she left the room and, again, she was sorely tempted.

Fully dressed, she rejoined him in the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bathtub. She opened her laptop and just as she'd hoped the red dot that was the Impala blinked on the GPS grid as Sam made his way toward Lordsburg. "Right on time, Sammy boy," she said closing up the Dell, "He should be here sometime tonight providing the battery on his phone doesn't go dead." _But we'll have moved on_, she thought to herself, dangling the Dean carrot in front of you.

Knowing that Sam was free and on his way Dean said smugly, "You see, I was right about the devil's trap."

"Just because your brother can get out of a devil's trap," she warned him, "doesn't mean he should be able to. Something maybe you should think about."

Getting her gist and taking her words to heart he told her, "I think about it all the time, Angel. All the time."


	5. Chapter 5

"Now you be sure and tell agent Mulder what I said," Angel said sweetly sticking her head and arm out the window to shake hands with the motel's owners and to hand them Dean's cell phone.

"I think we have it. Agent Mulder is supposed to wait here until he hears from you on this phone," Fred Oliver held up the cell phone and shook it for emphasis, "You've already paid for his room so he should rest while you take Mr. Richards to the FBI substation in Tartarus, Oklahoma."

"That's correct, Mr. Oliver," Angel told him with a smile.

"And how will we know him?" the missus wanted to know?

"He's young, longish hair, about seven feet tall and he'll be driving an unmarked, black 1967 Chevrolet Impala. Looks a lot like Mr. Richards here…only prettier," Angel said shooting a thumb over her shoulder.

_Prettier than her prisoner, Keith Richards?_ Mrs. Oliver thought incredulously, her heart fluttering as she bent over to look in the window and wave once more to Dean. No one could be that good looking.

Dean grimaced a smile and held up his cuffed hands and gave her a return wave.

She smiled back and asked Angel, "Will he be alright back there? Does he need a pillow...or a blanket?"

"He'll be just fine," Angel said and, more for Dean's edification, added, "And if he gives me any trouble he'll just end up riding in the trunk."

Mrs. Oliver snorted a laugh and covered her mouth coyly.

"We'll be sure Fox gets the message," her husband added, "If you leave now you'll have missed the evening rush hour. I guess transporting prisoners at night is the best way to go."

"Well, the bureau thanks you and your lovely wife for your hospitality and your discretion in this matter," Angel said and started up the Charger.

Fred Oliver's chest puffed up a good three inches and he told her, "It's been our pleasure, Agent Scully."

The two of them stepped back away from the car and, before Angel's window closed all the way, Dean shouted, "The truth is out there!"

Laughing in spite of herself Angel guided the car out of the parking lot and back onto the frontage road heading for the freeway while Dean Winchester settled back into his seat and sighed.

He was fairly well satisfied. He had slept more at one time than he had in years and was full of Mrs. Oliver's home cooked food and her amazing homemade strawberry-rhubarb pie...and he had a chauffer.

They drove for almost an hour before turning down a seldom-used dirt road and after an additional half-hour of silence Angel finally spoke up. "The truth is out there?" She looked in the rearview mirror at her passenger, Dean's face bathed in the ever-present interior light aimed at the back seat.

"Keith Richards?" he countered quickly as if he'd been holding it in, "Tartarus?"

"I thought it was fitting. People say he's dead but too drunk to know it and you," she paused for a second and wondered if she really wanted to know more, "People say you died and came back four months after the fact. That would make you a gazillion years and eight months shy of eternity. Not exactly how your deal was supposed to go down."

Dean cocked his head and wondered who had stolen the bitch on wheels and left a moderately civilized human being in her place…and she wanted to talk. He did, too. Lately he had found it nearly impossible to talk to Sammy or even Bobby, not that they wouldn't listen. He was afraid they would listen too carefully and either throw him in a straight jacket or exorcise him. So he kept his fears to himself, waiting and wondering what he was supposed to do next and, until he figured out the big picture, he would go on hunting with Sam…as soon as he got away from the wicked bitch of the west. "It was more like a near death experience I guess," he told her, "I don't remember much. Just trying to keep the hellhounds at bay one minute, then waking up still in one piece. Just bits and pieces of dreams."

If his scattered and disjointed dreams were really memories of his death and his time in hell, then he had been lied to at the least and, at the most, dead and gone to hell. If that were the case then he hoped he'd been brought back for the greater good of man and not for evil purposes because if he was now a demon or a demon hybrid then he was no better than the things he hunted. The only other reason he could think of for being brought back from hell was to kill Sam, which could very well be the plan if the angels had indeed brought him back. Either way it was a no win situation.

"Your deal, it was with Lilith?" she asked him and he heard a quaver in her voice.

"Evidently. And yours?" Dean asked point blank. He couldn't see her face but he did notice the stiffening of her neck and shoulders and she was quiet for a long time.

"No...I don't know...I don't think so...I…" she said uncertainly.

He was about to mention the scars on her legs when the Charger slowed precipitously and he wondered if they had arrived in Wherethefuckever, Missouri. Sitting forward in his cage he heard Angel curse when a speeding yellow Hummer slid to a dusty stop in the middle of the dirt road, effectively cutting them off. "Who is it?" he asked.

"I know you know who the McManus brothers are," she said referencing the toilet incident, "Well, these two pudknockers are the McMenace brothers," she said in a disgusted voice as she let the Charger roll to a stop. She leaned over and pulled something from a pouch attached to the front of the passenger and opened her door. Stepping out .she peered over the car's roof keeping the Charger between herself and the Hummer.

"Well, if it isn't our favorite hunter," a tall, brawny redhead said with a thick Irish brogue.

"Duncan," she acknowledged nodding to the driver as he got out of the Hummer, "Declan?"

"Riding shotgun, my dear girl," he told her as his passenger, an equally tall, equally brawny redhead got out of the Hummer holding a shotgun in his hand.

"What can I do for you boys?" Angel asked the duo.

"That depends on who or what you've got in that little black go fast of yours," Declan told her.

"I've got Dean Winchester," she informed them both and after a pregnant pause added, "and a Tec-9." She set the butt of the model KG-9 on the roof of the Charger and aimed it in their general direction. Years before she'd converted it to a fully automatic sub machine gun and the lethal spray would take out both hunters and swiss cheese the Hummer in nano-seconds.

"Now darlin'," Duncan said in a voice as smooth as honey, "No need to go all hostile on us…unless of course your off your meds...again."

"I'm right as rain," Angel said with a malicious smile, "But a little birdie told me about a certain someone's ruptured testicles."

"Oh, man," Dean said from the cage with a nervous laugh and closed his legs in a knee jerk reaction to the thought while the man in the headlights, the one who had evidently been smacked severely in the nether regions by Angel, just smiled.

"So what are ya doin' with the Winchester?" Declan asked boldly rounding the Hummer and walking toward the Charger.

"Not your worry now is it?" Angel assured him.

"Who's payin' ya ta bring him in, ya snotty bitch?" Declan then asked as he walked up to the passenger window and shined his flashlight inside.

"We're just out joy riding," Angel replied.

Dean held up his manacled hands to block the light but not before the Irishman saw his face.

"I can see by the bruises on his face that it's been a joyful experience for the lad."

Angel just smiled and shrugged her shoulders as Duncan walked up to stand next to his brother and said, "Well then, if no one's put a bounty on him, you won't mind if we cut your date short and take him off your hands."

Dean watched and listened to the exchange between the three hunters and was floored when she said, "If you want him, it's gonna to cost ya." and stepped away from the door and around the car to stand face to face with the brothers. Dean couldn't hear what was being discussed but, when a wad of cash passed from Duncan's ham fist into the bitch's hand, he just knew they were getting ready to serve him a shit sandwich. When she returned and opened his door he knew lunch was being served.

Pulling him out she manhandled him forward to stand before the brothers Grim. He balked and pulled back then turned on her. "Now wait a minute. You said there was a bounty on me."

"The bounty's on Sam, you git," she spat out, "You're not worth anything to me or to anyone else for that matter. No magic, no juice, just a re-animated corpse," she added and he felt as if she'd kicked him in the stomach.

Bobby had told him he was in a coma, that his heart had shut down a few times but that they'd been able to resuscitate him but a few months later, when they'd finally caught up with Sammy, his brother had looked at him as if he'd seen a ghost. Something had happened to him. He didn't know exactly what or why but he was going to find out. He did however have a good guess as to what was going to happen to him in the next few minutes if he couldn't talk his way out of this one.

Stuffing the money into her jeans pocket Angel passed the keys to the shackles to Duncan, got back into the Charger and drove away while Dean just stared at the fading taillights. He snorted contemptuously, still unable to believe what had just happened. She had actually sold him to the Boondock Saints. "Well, boys," he said turning to face the two of them, "That was a lot of money to pay for me and I'm flattered but…"

Duncan's fist caught Dean in the gut and he doubled over pressing his cuffed hands to his gut. He slowly straightened back up and Declan hit him with an inelegant but effective uppercut that set him reeling back on his heels. He still managed to remain upright until a leather blackjack smacked his temple dropping him like a stone into an unconscious heap.

"Not much sport," Declan pronounced looking down at Dean's crumpled form.

"Americans," Duncan said disgustedly shaking his head, "So soft headed."


	6. Chapter 6

When Dean regained consciousness he found himself in a familiar position, duct taped to a chair in a vacant, dilapidated hunting cabin. Sam had once mentioned that the two of them spent a lot of time tied to chairs which, in and of itself, wasn't bad. It was the beatings and torture that usually went along with it that made it such a downer. Dean had agreed and noted that they spent almost as much time pinned to walls by various demons, a waste of precious time when they could be out hunting…or drinking And now, sure as shit, here he sat, taped up and helpless to stop Declan's fist as it smacked him hard in the mouth.

"Easy now, Dec," Duncan cajoled his brother, "He's just now rejoined us and ya don't want ta be knockin' him out again."

"Yeah," Dean agreed enthusiastically, "Listen to your brother."

Declan, the more reckless of the brothers, pulled his arm back and bunched up his fist to take another swing at the wiseass Winchester but Duncan's cooler head prevailed even though he did have to punch Declan in the solar plexus just to get his attention. "I said to stop. We need this one if we're gonna get the other."

Dean snorted. Were they stupid enough to think he'd help them lure Sammy into a trap? Duncan stared at him with blue eyes only a tad bit less vacant than Declan's and Dean had his answer.

"Now, my guess is that the only reason the bitch gave you to us was so we wouldn't follow her to your brother...but the way I figure it, we don't need to chase after her 'cause he'll come right to us instead, to save his big brother, same as I would," Duncan figured.

"Well, then you're dumber than you look," Dean told him, bracing himself for the punch that was sure to follow.

"Now can I hit him?"

"Patience is a virtue Dec," Duncan soothed Declan, "and as soon as he calls his brother, you can have at him."

"I'd love to help you boys out," Dean said in mock seriousness, "but Angel took my phone."

"Angel?" Declan's eyes glazed over in deep thought.

"Oh, I guess you know her by her maiden name, Bitch."

Duncan pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket and flipped it open. He held it out in front of Dean and asked, "What's the number?"

"Sorry, no bars."

Declan didn't get it but hit him anyway and the chair toppled over backwards Dean's head smacking the rotted wood of the cabin's floor.

"Pick him up," Duncan ordered.

Yanked upright again, Dean gingerly opened and closed his mouth. He knew he was going to feel it in the morning…if the thug brothers didn't kill him tonight.

"Now, what's the number?" Duncan asked again.

"Dude, it doesn't really matter. He's probably out of range by now. You know, 'Can you hear me now?'...not." This time Duncan hit him and Dean found himself flat on his back, the chair broken into pieces and the two of them kicking him mercilessly with steeled toed boots. He was just one kick away from oblivion when, as swiftly as the attack had begun, it stopped. The two brothers walked away leaving him to bleed into the cracks and crevices of the old wood.

Dean was thankful for the respite as it gave him time to get his hands free of the duct tape. Duncan watched him with detached interest knowing full well that he would be hard pressed to fight back or to even crawl away should they come after him again. "Why are you doing this?" Dean asked Duncan angrily through lips that would now make Angelina Jolie jealous, "What'd we ever do to you? To any of you?"

"You opened a direct conduit to hell, ya bleedin' sod. Made our jobs that much harder. Made it that much easier for the devil to do his dirty work."

Ever since the day Jake opened the devil's gate he, Sam, Ellen and Bobby had been the targets of every Tom, Dick and Duncan looking for some kind of retribution. They had not opened the gate and had risked their lives to close it but there was so much spin on the story now that Dean was afraid he'd get motion sickness if he heard it again. Painfully he struggled into a sitting position and, after a few minutes rest, he went back to pulling away the strips of silver tape around his ankles. The brothers just stood watching him in silence.

"For what it's worth," Dean said with labored breath, "my brother and I didn't open that gate. We tried to stop it."

"Well, ya didn't try hard enough," Declan declared and he pulled a Glock 36 from his shoulder holster and absently started to wipe it clean on his shirttail.

Duncan opened and closed this cell phone with a snap, over and over again, deciding what to do next. "Ya know, with or without your help, we're gonna get your brother," Duncan told Dean.

"That so?"

"Oh yeah," Declan said pulling back the slide on the Glock, "And I'm gonna take great pleasure separating his head from his shoulders."

"You don't know my brother very well, do you?" Dean said getting slowly to his feet, thinking that he didn't even know his brother anymore. What he did know was that Sam could take care of himself.

"I don't know the man at all but I do know brothers and I know you'd rather die than turn on kin, especially your only brother. So my options are limited. I can let you go or I can kill you."

"Letting me go is good."

"But killin' ya is better," Declan said pointing the Glock at him. Before he could pull the trigger, a coyote started its maniacal yipping and the Irishman lifted his head to listen.

_Where's a hellhound when you need one?_ Dean wondered and the cries of the coyote abruptly stop. He then heard a different sound, one that made his heart jump into his throat.

Duncan and Declan heard it too and suddenly lost all interest in killing Dean Winchester. The only thing they wanted to do was run but the solitary door to the cabin rattled and they could clearly hear the scrambling and scratching of some sort of animal.

"Have you got any Devil's shoestring?" Dean shouted frantically and look around for a weapon of any kind. He spotted the splintered chair legs and grabbed one with a wicked, sharp point as the scratching gave way to deep-throated growling.

The brother's looked at him, eyes wide, mouths agape and he demanded, "Which one of you made the deal?"

The brothers had made hundreds of deal but none with the devil. "Neither of us," Duncan declared and looked at Dean through slitted eyes.

"Don't look at me. My deal came due months ago," he told them backing slowly away from the door thinking it didn't really matter who made the deal because it was only a matter of minutes before the hellhound would break through the rotted wooden the door and they'd all be dead.

It took even less time than that before the door splintered and Duncan and Declan backed away from the empty doorway searching for something they could hear but couldn't see while Dean backed away from the large, slobbering, black beast that took a step into the room. It then lunged at the closest of the brothers and Duncan went down under an invisible weight while his shredding clothes and spurting blood were plainly visible.

"Get it off of me!" he screamed and trashed to and fro trying to dislodge the unseen beast.

Declan aimed his gun and fired in his brother's direction and, had it been corporeal, the hellhound would have been hit. As it was, the bullet passed through and lodged in Duncan's chest but the damage was already done. The burly Irish hunter was already dead and the hellhound turned its attention to Declan.

It was a repeat of the initial slaughter, brutal but relatively quick, and it gave Dean no time to grab the gun that had flown out of Declan's hand when he'd hit the ground, not that it would have helped him anyway had the beast wanted the attack him. The beast, apparently finished with the brothers, turned its glowing red eyes to Dean and he hefted the chair leg in his hand and moved behind the table. He was as ready as he'd ever be to do battle but the hellhound only turned and trotted out the way it had come in, tail wagging, leaving Dean still standing but shaking in his boots..

Did I just whistle up Cujo? he wondered and, instead of being appalled at the prospect, he thought it was kind of cool. Waking over to Duncan's body he should have been horrified at the thought that he might be remotely responsible for the carnage at his feet but instead he felt a strange kind of thrill and smiled, his lips twisting into something more akin to a grimace than a grin and said in awe, "Dean Winchester, hellhound whisperer."

They were the only words Dean got out of his mouth before the worst pain he'd ever felt in his life hit him. He dropped to his knees as red-hot pokers of pain shot up his legs and a knot of molten lava settled in his chest. Sweat broke out to bath his entire body, soaking his clothes through while his skin drained of all color and he began to shake. He looked down to where the pain was the worst and saw patches of blood through the holes in his shirt and looked around for the hellhound. He was alone in the cabin.

Over time the pain lessened until it was gone, leaving him slick with blood and perspiration, panting and on the verge of puking. Crawling on his hands and knees, he made his way to the table and reached for Duncan's cell phone and after three tries, he finally punched in a complete number. He listened to it ring, once, twice, three times and when a sleepy voice answered, Dean mumbled into the phone, "Bobby, I need your help."


	7. Chapter 7

Gehennam Import/Exports was housed in what had been a textile mill in the mid 1800s. Located a few miles from where the dirt short cut Angel had taken dumped out onto SR19, the Charger now sat in the building's dark parking lot, music playing softly, while Angel popped two morphine pills and washing them down with cold coffee. She laid her head back on the headrest and closed her eyelids, wishing desperately that she could erase the images behind them. She knew she couldn't and that sleep wouldn't come to her this night and probably wouldn't for days to come so she sat and waited for daybreak and to call Sam Winchester. When the sun finally broke the horizon, she picked up a prepaid cell phone and punched in Dean's cell number and Sam answered on the first ring.

"Dean?"

"No Sam, it's me." Sam paused and she read his mind, "Yeah, it's me, the bitch."

"That wasn't the word I was gonna use. Where's Dean, you…"

"Un-uh, mind your manners," she warned cutting him off, "or I'll do something rude to your brother."

"Lemme talk to him."

"Kind of bossy for someone holding absolutely no cards aren't you?"

"Okay, okay. What do you want me to do?"

"Exactly as I tell you or you'll need a GPS to find all the pieces of your brother."

Sam, having opted to ignore the Oliver's message from Angel the evening before, sat in the Impala and gripped the steering wheel with his left hand, the knuckles on his long fingers turning white, while his other hand threatened to crush the phone he held up to his ear as he listened to her instructions. When she was done he started up the car.

Leaning against the Charger, Angel heard the Impala before she saw it her 396 cu in engine flexing its muscles powerfully as Sam pushed Dean's baby to the max. She watched as he pulled into the parking lot, tires screaming, the brakes grabbing viciously as he stopped the 4,000 pound vehicle just inches from the Charger.

Sam stepped out of the Chevy and walked purposefully up to her and, pushing directly into her personal space, demanded, "My brother."

"Does he know you drive his car like that?" she asked with a false smile. Sam stood with his jaw up, his lips clamped tightly together, his nostrils flared and when he didn't answer; she pushed him back with a finger to the chest and said, "I didn't think so."

"Where is he?" Sam's his voice calm and quite cold.

Angel might have been afraid if he knew she didn't have what he was looking for…but he didn't. "Inside," she lied and brushed past him. She walked up the concrete steps and into the office while Sam followed like a puppy, albeit a giant, hungry, sleep deprived, thoroughly pissed off puppy.

The inside of the red brick building was typical warehouse chic with two old gray metal desks sitting at the far end of the cavernous room, behind which, stood several tall wooden bookcases filled with catalogs. The floor was constructed of wide wooden planks that had been hewn during the civil war and never refinished and, as Sam looked down, he could see years of wear and tear, claw marks and what he was sure was blood.

A redhead with a hard kind of prettiness sat at one of the desks looking bored out of her skull. No phones rang and there were no customers in the office area and Sam couldn't hear anything remotely mechanical from the back. He hadn't seen any trucks in the parking lot and wondered exactly what they imported or exported at….? He never saw the name on the sign out front or he might have ventured a guess.

Angel cleared her throat and the red head's eyes focused. She quickly stood up once she recognized the bounty hunter and, when she saw Sam, she became quite animated in a squeaking, irritating kind of way.

Sam read the single name on her nameplate and tried not to groan. Summar. Cute. Not Summer which was bad enough but Summar, which probably meant she was most likely narcissistic and self-absorbed or her parents were burnt out hippies.

"Oh, goody, you found him," Summar gushed and, before Sam could ask about Dean or about her odd comment, she disappeared behind a door between two of the bookcases calling for someone in the back in a singsong voice.

Sam had forgotten empty headed.

The door reopened and a man came into the room with Summar was right on his ass. So she wouldn't get lost on her way back Sam figured.

The owner of Gehennam Import/Exports was tall, taller than Sam by a good six inches. He had long, flowing blond curls and, as women were want to gush, "the face of an angel". Immaculately dressed in expensive business attire as always, no amount of aftershave or mouthwash could mask the stench of hellfire that Angel always smelled when doing business with him.

Sam didn't seem to notice and shook his pro-offered hand before he realized that this was probably the man who had put the contract out on Dean.

"I'm Henry Mammon but you can just call me Mammon," the man said, his nearly transparent eyes shining like blue ice.

_Nobody's eyes could be that pale blue and intense_, Sam thought and wondered if the eye color was some kind of mutant albinistic trait. But the man wasn't visually impaired, not with the way he was looking at the bitch almost lovingly. "Listen," Sam began, "I've done everything she's told me to do and now I want to see my brother."

Mammon blinked his baby blues and smiled, his expression showing that he was a loss. "Your brother?"

"Goddamn other shoe," Sam muttered taking a step back, his hand moving to the gun in his pocket, "This bitch said there's a contract out on him."

"Well, that bitch lied," Mammon replied never losing a step, "The contract is on you, my young friend. We can't have someone with your... _talents..._walking around loose on the streets. Not good for business."

"Business?"

"Gehennam Import/Exports, dealing in all things supernatural and, right now, demons are the hot item, the gift that keeps on giving."

Gehennam, the Jewish version of hell. Not only were demons being bought and sold but Jake had opened up Filene's basement and flooded the market.

"Who in their right mind would want a demon?" Sam asked.

Angel snorted at his naivety. Who wouldn't want someone to do all the dirty work?

"Politicians, presidents, dictators, CEOs, actors who would kill for a part. Everyone from the rich and famous down to the man who's so sick of the barking dog next door that he'll spend his last dime to tell his neighbor and his dog to go to hell…literally," Mammon explained staring inquisitively at Sam. Having been in the import/export business for a long as he could remember, thousands of years in fact, he found that dealing in demons and humans alike was getting harder and harder. One was frequently hard pressed to tell the players apart what with the eroding of society's mores…again.

Mammon had been in business when the Aztec's had vanished, had almost brought about the fall of the Roman Empire all on his own and the wars, God in heaven, they had been fun but the world hadn't seen anything yet. Sitting down at the desk next to Summar's, his knees almost coming up to his chin, Mammon rolled the chair backward and leaned back to watch the bounty hunter and the bounty. "Sam Winchester," he started, "What are we going to do with you? You know you're going to have to pick a side sooner or later."

"I picked my side a long time ago," Sam assured him and pulled the nickel-plated Colt from his pocket and aimed it at the boss, "Now where's my brother?"

Mammon simply quirked an eyebrow and looked hard at Angel for long moments.

"I sold him," she finally confessed popping three more of the morphine pills into her mouth like TicTacs.

"Well, there you have it." Mammon laughed as if everything was explained away to Sam's satisfaction.

"To who?" Sam demanded turning the gun on the bounty hunter.

Instead of being alarmed Mammon just continued to smile and look at Angel expectantly.

"The McDonnoughs," she said and shrugged her shoulders.

Sam lowered his gun as fear gripped him. When Dean was gone, the McDonnough brothers had jumped Bobby and had beaten him up pretty badly, vowing to do even worse to Sam when they finally found him. He could only imagine what they were doing to Dean, who was in their minds, not only responsible for the breach in the world's parameter but was now back from the dead. "You gotta help me," Sam pleaded and grabbed the bounty hunter's arms.

His actions startled Angel and she broke away and stepped back, ready to cold cock him if he touched her again.

"He's right," Mammon said standing up and coming out from behind the desk to sit on the countertop, "A compatriot of mine was just telling me about an incident with a hellhound. Perhaps it's too dangerous for Dean Winchester to be out there on his own when they're on the prowl."

The two of them waited for her to say something but before she could flat out refuse to go after Dean, Sam grabbed her in a chokehold and put his gun to her temple.

"You can go ahead and shoot me but I'm not saving anyone from hellhounds," she said adamantly, her speech slurred ever so slightly, "And if I know Duncan and Declan your brother's already dead and back where he belongs."

Mammon saw her distress at the mention of the hellhounds and wanted to enfold her in his arms and protect her. His desire shown in his eyes, played out on his face. Sam Winchester had been right in thinking Mammon cared for her. He loved her. Not in spite of her obvious flaws but because of them. He watched her keenly as the drugs took hold, her relief so intense that she became weak in the knees and Sam almost lost his hold on her.

"Hellhounds, one of Satan's nastier creatures," Mammon said and thought back to the night they had attacked the woman, the night he had found her bleeding profusely, her children dead. Mammon shook his head. He never liked to dwell on the children. Too repugnant for him. Definitely more along Lilith's line of work or, should he say, Lilith's handiwork.

Standing, Mammon walked over to where Sam stood almost dwarfing him. He reached out and wrapped his hand around the gun and effortlessly pulled it from his grip. He then assured the young hunter, "I'm sure I can convince Angel, I believe that's what you call her, to fetch your brother. In the mean time, I'll leave you in Summar's capable hands."

The three of them looked to Summar's desk and when the silence finally penetrated her wandering thoughts, she looked up expectantly and asked, "You need me, boss?"

"Yes, Summar. Why don't you take our guest into the back," Mammon suggested, his face serene, totally unreadable.

The redhead jumped to her feet and hurried around the desk to grab Sam's arm. She dragged him toward the door at the back of the room and told him breathlessly how gnarly it would be to hang out with him while they waited for Dean.

Sam cringed and rolled his eyes but would have done more than that had he seen her feral smile and her pretty green eyes turn an unnatural color.


	8. Chapter 8

Angel ran her fingers through her hair and took a sip of the clear liquid in the glass the bartender set before her without her even having to ask. She was a regular in the small bar; stopping by after a job or whenever she felt that being alone for one minute more could end up with her eating her own gun. She tipped heavily, not so much for the service but for the solitude, so they treated her well but with kid gloves.

The first Ketel One on the rocks never went down smoothly but, in a few minutes, it would begin to soften the edges of her night and make it bearable for her to be around people, not that she would smile or flirt or share a laugh. She would simply sit at the bar for as long as she could, get as drunk as she could, while her unsmiling visage and dead eyes warned off any would be Lotharios. After a few hours she would get up, leave the Dodge parked on the street in front of the bar and walk home to grab a few seconds of sleep before getting ready for her next hunt or just waiting for her ghosts to drive her back to the bar.

This night was no different except that, instead of getting ready to hunt Dean Winchester, she was more than likely going to be hunted by him so she would sit tight for a few more hours, reflect on the events of the past few days and try to figure out why she felt such unease and why she even gave a crap.

A successful bounty hunt was usually enough to create a false high, a sense of accomplishment but this hunt had been different and she was close to hitting bottom again, rock bottom being reserved for special occasions. She probably should have left Dean Winchester behind at the parish house but the two brothers were joined at the hip. Where one went, the other followed and she had used it to her advantage; keeping the loose cannon with her and the college boy following, which, in the end, had been the easiest and safest way to deliver her charge.

True, Tweedle Mean and Tweedle Meaner had come along and had almost fucked everything up. Dean Winchester had become their problem while Sam Winchester had followed her doggedly, walking right into Mammon's clutches and the only thing the Irish sonsofbitches had fucked up was Dean Winchester…until he had pulled a hellhound out of his hat.

The vacant hunting cabin that the McDonnoughs had taken Dean Winchester to was nothing more than a pile of cinder and ash and, before she'd circled back and doused it with gasoline and set it afire, it had been a regular charnel house. The Hummer hadn't been anywhere in sight and a second vehicle had pulled off the beaten track and someone with an iron constitution had gotten out to inspect the carnage.

A man's bloody footprints marked the floor where he'd walked up to both bodies and, finding them torn to Begging Strips, had retraced his steps back out the door. The tire tracks, those of a heavy gas guzzling car as opposed to a truck or an environmentally friendly compact car, headed in the same direction as those of the Hummer so regardless of which vehicle he was in, Angel knew Dean Winchester had headed north, away from Gehennam's and directly toward the small town in which she hold up between jobs.

_So much for hunting you down_,she thought cursing Mammon for finding Dean Winchester's newfound talents of more interest than those of his baby brother. There had always been talk among hunters about the talented Winchester family, about John trading his soul for his son's life, about Dean trading his soul for his brother's life and about Sam possibly trading his soul to the Devil himself. After the gate opened the rumors flu as thick as the demons who had slipped out and when things had turned to crap in New Harmony, the dead not staying dead, pacts with angels and deals with demons, evil negating evil…or was it good winning out after all…the remaining Winchesters were now victims of a good old fashioned witch hunt.

But Angel couldn't muster up any righteous indignation because they had never done anything to her personally. She would simply find Dean, bring him in, collect her bounty and that would be the end of it for her. Downing her drink, she just said, "Fuck it," summing up her philosophy on life, death and everything in between.

Even the large amount of cash she'd been paid for Sam couldn't brighten her mood because she knew certain things to be true. Money couldn't buy happiness; it couldn't fix a trashed body or bring back those you loved. But money could buy enough alcohol and drugs to ease the pain and forget for a while and the second and third drinks went down much quicker than the first.

She was drinking doubles on ice and her brain would soon be short-circuiting the thoughts that always tried to shatter her tenuous peace and make her crazy. No, nothing was cut and dried anymore she realized, except for Ketel One. It was always as promised, always as expected and always put things into perspective and, downing another, she decided she could give two shits about Sam _or_ Dean Winchester.


	9. Chapter 9

It was the oldest trick in the book. Press every door buzzer in the apartment building foyer and someone would buzz back and open the entrance door. It worked like a charm and Dean made his way up to the apartment number Bobby had given him. Checking the door for traps Dean was mildly surprised when he found none. Just a harder than usual lock that took him a few seconds longer to pick. He reached his hand inside along the wall and flipped the light switch and the room lit up as did his eyes when he finally stepped inside. He was defiantly in the right place.

Angel's living room was sparsely furnished and decorated in Sportsman's Warehouse with subtle accents of Cabela's. The trappings of her trade were racked or stored on heavy metal shelving units lining the walls. Perusing her apartment he saw sub-zero sleeping bags, down coats, cross country skis and a pair of snowshoes stored on one rack. He could almost see a Yeti head mounted on her wall over the fireplace. Climbing gear such as pitons, ropes, harnesses and slings were draped over specially constructed racks along with nets and snares all of which were easily accessible whenever the call came in to go after a demon or, apparently, a hunter.

Looking around Dean hadn't come to her place to shop or to pry into her life…scratch that. He had come to pry and to find out anything he could about her, anything that could help him find Sammy and who exactly had put the bounty on his brother's head…and to take a breather between beatings.

Dean made his way across the living room and into the bathroom and switched on the light. _Jesus_, he thought looking into the mirror. It was a good thing it was dark out and that he'd kept to the shadows. Lifting the toilet lid he unbuttoned his bloody, dirt-streaked jeans and let lose a steady stream of red tinged urine. "Two more body parts heard from," he said aloud with a small, pathetic laugh.

His kidneys had joined his throbbing head and jaw, which felt like it should be wired up, and his ribs, the latter shooting excruciating pain throughout his body every time he took a deep breath. He sat gingerly on the edge of the tub for a good five minutes breathing in and out slowly before making his way to the kitchen where the large sub-zero refrigerator was a huge disappointment, not even a long forgotten science project bitch had plenty of cabinet space although most of it was taken up with gun cleaning equipment and supplies like waterproofing oils for leather goods.

The kitchen fridge was lacking but the liquor cabinet in the living room more than made up for it. It was a drunkard's dream and, kneeling on painfully skinned knees, Dean pulled out a bottle of forty-year-old Hankey Bannister, sat down on the couch and leaned back with a sigh. "Oh Angel, I gotta remember to tell you how much I love you," he said caressing the bottle tenderly, "Right before I shoot you."

He opened the bottle and took a long pull of the amber liquid. It was a shame to negate its smoothness with the sting of running it over the myriad of cuts in his mouth but, when it hit his throat, it was pure nectar. He lowered and rested the bottle bottom on his leg and continued to survey his surroundings. The desk beckoned but, first things first, and he took another drink of the Bannister.

It took him a good while to finally figure out where she hid the real tools of her trade. The guns, the knives and the ammunition to hunt her prey, both demon and hunter alike but he eventually found the mother load. There was tens of thousands of dollars worth of the finest, deadliest weapons on the market, all racked with meticulous care behind a false wall in, of all places, the shower. Also, squirreled away in the hiding place, were thousands of rounds of copper jacketed, hollow point, fang faces in 9mm and 45 calibers, plus easily a hundred boxes of enhanced penetration rounds, each with the ability to penetrate heavy skin, dense bone and then fragment once inside the softer tissue of the target. In other words they were first-rate monster bangers.

Selecting six of the handguns and a couple different boxes of ammo, Dean closed up the false wall and piled all but one of the guns from his cache on the couch then moved on to the desk. It was an old flat top piled high with paperwork of all kinds. He searched through the stacks, ignoring the few bills, briefly checking out the maps and then moved on to the torn pages of demonology and folklore that eventually made up the bible of every hunter. Newspaper articles on otherworldly phenomena were strewn helter-skelter and mixed in with the other hunt materials. Angel's office skills were as chaotic as her fieldwork was methodical but he found nothing regarding Sam and angrily pushed the debris off the desk.

Pain flared in the small of his back and he leaned back in the desk chair and decided it was as good a place as any to await her return. In his present condition the only way he could be a match for Angel was to use her own sweet Heckler & Koch HK45C on her and, as his hand touched the gun reassuringly, a stray thought came to him. All desks, especially those belonging to cold, calculating bitches like Angel, had hidden compartments.

He reached out to run his fingers down one side of the desk then back up the other until they felt the subtle change in the wood. He pressed in and the false bottom of the middle drawer gave way giving up the desk's secret and a lone manila envelope that fell to the floor. Inside were newspaper clippings and microfiche printouts from the local papers in and around Madison, Wisconsin going back three years. One front page, torn from the Capital Times with a headline in at least one-inch type accompanying a color photograph, caught his eye. 'Local tattoo artist found dead. Wife and children missing.'

"Angel, you changed your hair color," he said aloud then, looking closer at the photograph, added, "And your eyes?"


	10. Chapter 10

Angel slipped her key into the lock and, not thinking, simply opened the door and stepped inside. She smelled him before she saw him, barely visible in the darkened room, backlit only by the streetlight shining in through a window. The late McMenace brothers hadn't let him bathe and, when she switched on the light, she saw that they'd also beaten the crap out of him...and that he held her HK45C in his quivering, dirt and blood encrusted hand.

Amazed that he was still on his feet, the grim set of his mouth and the clenched jaw affirming his strength of will, he jerked the gun and she came closer. "I cooked and cleaned all day," he hissed, "You could have at least called."

She was so surprised that she never saw or even felt the butt of the gun as it smacked her in the temple, knocking her out cold. A short while later Angel did feel freezing cold water on her naked skin as it revived her and, propped up in the corner of the large dual-headed shower stall, Dean hauled her to her feet roughly and looped her cuffed hands over the shower's knob.

"I need a shower and I'm not letting you out of my sight," he told her and stepped back out of the stall, "And I figure you're not going anywhere buck naked." Dean gingerly pulled his shredded tee shirt over his head to reveal his battered and bruised torso. He loosened the fly of his jeans and pulled them off, then stepped into the shower closing the two glass doors behind him. He turned the knobs on the second showerhead and set it to just a tad under scalding. "And in the morning you're gonna take me to my brother or I'm gonna kill you," he then told her nonchalantly.

Angel snorted a laugh and adjusted her side of the shower from ice cold to toasty warm and enjoyed the sensation. She also enjoyed the thought of being 'buck naked' in the shower with Dean Winchester and even thought the handcuffs a kinky touch. She remained where he had put her, itching to get to one of the guns just out of reach on the other side of the wall.

Dean didn't move for the soap or shampoo. He just let the hot water run over his head and down his battered body and stared at Angel's back. He'd only caught a glimpse of the tattoo in the motel but now it shown wetly in the shower's light, the wings, slick and shiny black, undulating every time she took an angry breath. His eyes moved to the writing on the small of her back and it was then that he noticed the other scars. Along with the scratches he'd seen the scars on her face from the repair of a broken jaw and the myriad of smaller scars, along with the scarring of the needles, on both arms but had just now noticed three small round scars on her back that definitely looked like healed over bullet wounds. This woman was unquestionably lucky to be alive and as he looked down her legs and again saw the long gashes and the puncture wounds, the scars of a hellhound, he knew she shouldn't be alive at all.

Dean asked her, "Is this what the hunters did to you?" as he reached out to touch one of the rounded scars, still a dull pink.

Showering with a gorgeous man, even a resourceful prick of a gorgeous man who had obviously found her stashed files, was usually a prelude to sex but Angel wasn't surprised when he focused on her scars instead. They were quite off putting. She sighed and tried to move away from him and if he could have seen her face he would have seen her eyes ice up.

"No, don't," he said softly and moved his finger to gently touch the second then the third scar, "I'm just curious."

Angel sucked in her breath, shivering at his touch and he pulled his finger back as if he'd been burned. He started to apologize, "I'm sorry I didn't mean..."

"It's Okay," she said coldly and slipped her hands off the knob. To avoid what she knew would be his piteous gaze, she turned and didn't look him in the face but dropped her eyes past his own tattoo and gasped out loud.

Dean, thinking she was impressed with the size of his dick, smiled cockily until she asked, "Do they hurt?"

Still on a totally different wavelength Dean opened his eyes wide and pulled his head back in shock amused by her bawdy suggestion. By the grace of God the brothers hadn't kicked him in the gnads and he shook his head and smiled cheekily.

"The scars, you pig" she snapped when she realized he'd completely misunderstood.

"Oh, the scars," he said and laughed. He finally understood her question and looked down at the two inconsequential scars, one on his peck, the other on his abdomen. He shook his head and thought that maybe she liked the 'comparing scars' scene in Lethal Weapon 3, though she was clearly the winner. "These little things?" he asked, "This one's from a collision with a tombstone and this is an old appendectomy scar."

"Right," she replied sarcastically and wondered exactly what his deal was, why he was downplaying his own scars when he seemed so interested in hers but when she looked hard into his eyes, she knew he wasn't playing head games and she wondered what in the hell was going on. His body was covered with claw marks, starting at his shins and stopping just under his chin, the most concentrated damage directly over his heart. They were the scars of a hellhound, the same as hers.

Still woozy from the alcohol and the rap on the head, Angel turned her back to him once more and closed her eyes. She leaned in letting her forehead rest on the cool tiles.

Dean took pity on her and asked, "If I un-cuff you are you gonna try and kill me?"

The absurdity of it all hit her and she laughed weakly. No, she wasn't going to try and kill him. She was going to make nice and slip a ring through his nose and lead him to Mammon, just like a bull to slaughter. Mammon was going to kill him. She turned around and held up her shackled hands and Dean slipped the key into the locks and tossed the hardware out onto the bathmat.

"Tell me you didn't have that key up…"

"In my hand the whole time," he assured her with a smile and placed his hands on either side of her face.

She didn't recoil and he stared long and hard at her. He saw no contact lenses nor blonde roots at the base of her dark hair and wondered how she'd pull it off. He was met with silence and concluded she didn't want to talk about it.

Angel wanted to talk about it but couldn't begin to explain what had happened. One day she was a multi tasking wife and soccer mom and, before the end of the month, she had committed filicide and her hair and eyes had turned as dark as her heart.


	11. Chapter 11

They finished showering in silence, back to back, each lost in thought. Dean grabbed a towel and waited for Angel to finish and, as she stepped out of the shower, he caught her jaw in his hand and turned the left side of her face to the light. A purplish bruise stood out against the fair skin on her temple and for some reason he felt like a class A shit.

"Listen, I'm sorry about smacking you in the head."

"Forget it. It comes with the territory" she said and pulled away from him, "And thanks for not chaining me to the toilet."

"Don't be in a hurry to thank me 'cause I am gonna chain you to the bed so you'd better dose yourself up or whatever it is that you need to do because I'm rackin' out." Dean stood by the door; a towel wrapped around his waist, his arms folded across his chest and waited expectantly.

Angel quickly dried herself off, wrapped herself in the towel and ran a brush through her hair. As she looked in the mirror, beads of moisture reformed on her upper lip and her hands starting to shake.

"Listen, you can go cold turkey some other time," he said cutting to the chase pulling open one of the drawers. He fished out a syringe and a vile and handed them to the bounty hunter.

Pushing him out of the way Angel rummaged further in the drawer and came up with the elastic band she would need then looked at Dean expectantly.

"No way I'm leaving you alone in here with all those weapons," he told her pointing to the hidden wall, "So shoot 'em up, cowgirl."

She gave him the skunk eye. The sanctimonious son of a bitch thought she was a junkie. Okay, technically she was but it was for the pain. Her only true vice was vodka and she could probably be classified as an alcoholic no problem. The wounds from the hellhounds had never healed properly or were still infected with whatever hell germs the beasts carry and the pain was ever present and intense enough that the morphine barely touched it anymore. There were one or two stronger painkillers out there but she had to admit she liked the pleasant buzz the morphine gave her.

Dean watched her shoot up in uncomfortable silence. He was okay with judging her for every other crappy thing she' ever done but the drugs were a whole 'nother Oprah. He couldn't imagine what kind of pain she must be in to stick needles in her arms and pop pills like they were Skittles...but she had the scars to prove it. When she'd finished, Dean followed her out of the bathroom and to her bed.

She whirled on him and asked testily, "You don't mind if I sleep in the nude, do you?" Without waiting for an answer she let her towel drop to the floor and held up her hands, ready for the handcuffs. What she really wanted to ask was if he minded if she woke him up with blood curdling screams in the middle of the night, something that happened fairly regularly.

"It's your bed," he told her shrugging his shoulders then asked, "You sleep on your front or back?"

Angel lay back in the bed and lifted her hands up over her head resting then against the ornate metal headboard while Dean snapped one cuffs onto one wrist and threaded the other end through the cutout design in the headboard then snapped the second around her other wrist.

Standing back to admire his handiwork he said, "You've done this before haven't you, Angel?"

"You know of a better way to get out of a speeding ticket, Officer Dick?" she replied.

Dean just laughed and stepped away from the bed and let his towel drop to the floor. "I seem to have left all my clothes in my other car and, as much as I liked going through your lingerie stash, I couldn't find anything that would fit. No spare boxers, no extra toothbrush, not even condoms. Not many overnight guests, huh?" he asked getting into the bed beside her.

"What do you think, Bosco? Do you have a place where you can bring a date and guarantee that a demon or a hellhound won't show up?"

"Bosco?" he laughed and switched off the light.

Dean fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow but, an hour later and deep in the throws of his own nightmare, her screams broke through and he sat straight up in the bed. Angel thrashed wildly, the chains to the cuffs clanging noisily but still she slept on, trapped in a hell of her own mind's making. Rolling partially on top of her to keep her from kicking him where the McNasty brother's hadn't, he tried shaking her, then, covering her mouth with his hand so the neighbors wouldn't call the cops, she finally did wake up and, when she found she couldn't breath, she bit him.

"Damn it," he cursed and pulled his hand away. After a few minutes of her raspy breathing and, when he could feel her heart against his chest slow down a little, he asked her, "I guess it would be pretty lame if I clichéd you with 'It's only a bad dream', huh?"

Angel couldn't speak and only nodded as she took in another shaky breath. This one was bad and she knew she would soon have to trade in her scale of one to ten for a Richter.

Dean switched on the small light above the bed and could see her face. She looked different, almost like a real live woman with real emotions...and an exceptionally kissable mouth. As he stared at her ashen face he almost lost it when a tear slipped from the corner of her eye and he felt the need to kiss her and make it all better. Expecting a bite to the tongue or at least spit in his eye, he was pleasantly surprised when she kissed him back, lifting her head to meet him forcefully and when she moaned sensuously he seriously did loose it.

Contrary to popular belief, Dean Winchester had never made love to a woman handcuffed to a bed before and, although it was an experience he wouldn't soon forget, after a while he felt it only fair that he let her hands free before he hit a new high in debauchery, doing things to her that, if he ever told Sammy, would curl his hair.

In the end he was glad he had when Angel, sitting on the small of his back, her strong hands, instead of strangling him, kneading his taught, bunched up neck and shoulder muscles ran her warm tongue trailed down his neck. He groaned in pleasure when but, when she kissed a spot near his shoulder blade, he yelped in pain.

"Sorry," she apoligised softly.

Her hands moved further down his body until he couldn't stand it anymore and Dean rose up and pushed her gently over onto the bed and pinned her down. He brushed the hair back from her forehead and saw the sparkle of tears in her eyes and the moment gone. He rolled over and lay next to her on the bed. "I may be a hedonistic pig," he admitted, "but I'm also a hell of a listener."

Angel believed him whole-heartedly, on both counts, and started hesitantly. "I used to live in the real world," she began with a sad smile, "You can't get any more real than Madison, Wisconsin. My husband owned a successful tattoo parlor, not one of those seedy ones where you can get any part of your anatomy inked or pierced for a few bucks, but a class act where a simple design could set you back a lot of money. Randy was a true artist. "

"Did he do your wings?"

"No, I had them done…after…kind of like a penance."

From the newspapers, Dean only knew part of her story. She and her kids had disappeared after her husband had been brutally murdered but the names and dates tattooed on the small of her back didn't bode well for her kids.

"A few months before…before Randy was killed his clientele changed. His regular customers were run off by a bunch of scumbags with lots of money. Randy didn't seem to mind but then Randy didn't seem like Randy anymore. He couldn't even ink a decent piece after awhile." Angel stopped talking and Dean wondered if she was having second thoughts about spilling her guts. She wasn't, she was just trying to figure out how to explain what had happened.

"Long story short, I was in the back of the shop when these two guys came in carrying bibles, bottles of what I now know was holy water and shotguns. I guess exorcism wasn't what was on their minds because they just blew Randy to pieces. They sent the demon back to hell, alright, and what was left of my husband to the morgue. The cops came after me for his murder so I took my kids and ran."

Dean couldn't blame her for taking the kids and running because no one in his right mind would have ever believed her. No one ever believes.

"Months passed and we were so far off the beat path that I was sure no one could never find us but I underestimated the ability of hellhounds to track."

Dean knew there was only one reason for a hellhound to come calling, a deal with a demon.

She felt him tense up and swore to him, "I never made a deal. I never even knew that deals and hexes and all the other things that make up a person's worst nightmare were real…until that night. It was midnight and I could hear them in the distance, the awful howls, then the growling and then the scratching on the door until it splintered. There were two of them. They knocked me down and started in on my legs. The pain was unbearable and they didn't let up until I fired a shot into one of them. They didn't leave, just pulled back and milled around growling, bloody slobber all over their muzzles."

Her words were coming fast, as if she didn't get them out she would choke on them, and Dean pulled her closer. "Your kids were there with you?" he asked knowing the answer even before she said it.

"Oh, yeah," she whispered, her throat closing up with emotion, "And I knew I couldn't protect them. But I couldn't let them suffer either. I crawled into the bedroom and got a gun…"

"It's okay," Dean assured her. He pulled her up and pushed her face against his neck so she wouldn't say it out loud, so he wouldn't have to hear it and, at that moment he hated all over again. He hated the life they'd been forced to lead and the sacrifices they'd had to make. She began to sob and he hugged her, hating the world in general.

Suddenly Angel pushed Dean away and looked at him with abject misery in her eyes and asked him the million-dollar question. "Why didn't they finish the job? Why didn't they kill me?"

He shook his head and took her back into his arms. He didn't know why the hellhounds hadn't killed her but he knew just who would, Lilith, and he vowed they would go after her as soon they got Sam back.


	12. Chapter 12

Dean lay in the bed, his hand wrapped around Angel's wrist, holding her as much as she'd let him. The female hunter had been willing and passionate each time he had reached for her in the night but, with the coming of the dawn, even deeply asleep, she had moved closer to the edge of the bed and farther away from him. They hadn't exactly made love per se but their couplings had been no pity fuck...or fucks, or him just getting his rock off. It had been more like the chance meeting between two survivors on opposite sides of a terrible war, both of them alone and suffering and in need of a connection, a human touch and touched her he had. He smiled broadly thinking back on how he'd rocked her world again and again, their passion starting out angry and volatile only to end up tender and serene and he liked the Zen of it all. He also liked the fact that she'd trusted him enough to tell him her story.

_You'd better watch it,_ Winchester, he thought taking everything she'd told him with a grain of demon repelling salt_. _Many a man has lost it all, crashing onto the rocks in answer to a siren's song…or died after being shoved off a cliff. He sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed and, after a few minutes of soothing silence, he stood up and headed into the bathroom to shower. Half an hour later Angel found him bent over the sink brushing his teeth.

"Are you using my toothbrush?" she asked with a mock frown.

Dean straightened up, mouth foaming like a rabid dog, and told her, "You had a lot more than my cooties in your mouth last night."

She laughed, shaking her head. Dean Winchester amazed her with his irreverence and his audacity when he kissed her, wiping the toothpaste all over her face. She pushed him away and sat on the closed toilet and waited for him finish, staring at the rippling muscles of his back and the red and purple bruises.

Dean continued to brush his teeth when suddenly his hand stopped mid stroke and the toothbrush dropped into the sink. She watched as his head bent and he stared hard at his reflection in the mirror and let out what could only be described as a dry sob. When he did she knew he had finally seen the scars and he turned to face her, his breath quickening and pulled the towel from his hips.

When she didn't react he asked her, "You can see them?" and when she nodded he added, "You could always see them."

Angel nodded again and he turned back, skirting the sink to stand directly in front of the mirrored wall. The harsh light illuminated the angry slashes that ran the length of his legs and torso and suddenly he grew dizzy and felt like puking. He then felt utterly shocked and betrayed and he felt like killing himself…or Sammy…or Bobby…or even Angel. Instead of strangling her he let her enfold him in her arms and comfort him the way she'd once comforted her kids, the way his mother had once comforted him and he started to cry softly.

He stood in the bathroom, wrapped in her arms, until he was cried out and thoroughly embarrassed by his monumental chick flick moment. "Listen," he said pulling away from her, sniffing, "This doesn't leave this room."

"Okay, but do you want me to wipe your nose?"

Smiling halfheartedly he shook his head then asked her seriously, "Why couldn't I see 'em?"

"I don't know," she told him truthfully, "You're the only person who's ever commented on mine and knew they were from a hellhound. Maybe it takes a kindred spirit…"

"Or someone as equally damned," he said absently.

He was right about her being damned and she took no offense. Looking at his reflection again in the mirror she said instead, "Or maybe not." Angel turned Dean bodily around to face the mirror and the only scars that showed were the menial appendectomy scar and the gash from the tombstone.

"Or maybe not," he whispered.

After her shower Angel found Dean in the kitchen sitting at the table, his clothes freshly washed and fashionably torn, methodically cleaning the half a dozen hand guns he'd taken from behind the false wall and stashed within easy reach before she had returned home the night before. He had retrieved them and, as he waited for her to do 'whatever' in the bathroom, had started breaking them down. She sat down across from him and ran a finger down the barrel of a particularly beautiful Smith and Wesson 1911 with custom engraving and a satin nickel finish.

"I just cleaned that," he said testily and she laughed feeling the same way without her morning coffee.

"I'd offer you coffee but I don't have any," she already knew, "So how about some Bannister?"

"It's too early to drink," he told her, "Besides, I drank it all...and I ate all the pizza you ordered last night."

"I didn't order any pizza, jerk."

"Bitch," he responded automatically and looked up at her, the significance of their exchange hitting him almost painfully.

"Why won't Sammy tell me what happened?" he asked her searching for answers, "I though we were close, even when he came back and I wasn't sure he was, ya' know, "right" he was still my brother."

"Maybe he doesn't know what happened to you," she suggested.

He disagreed and shook his head, "He knows something, the way he looks at me, the things he _doesn't_ say...and Bobby. Man, his eyes are darting around so much when he looks at me it's a wonder they don't just fly out of his skull."

"Well then," Angel said patting his hand, "Let's just go and ask 'em."

"Just like that? You'll take me to Sam?" he asked incredulously. He wasn't going to have to force her or have to fight her every step of the way?

He looked at her with a questioning eye and she explained, "You had me at 'Take me to my brother or I'll kill you.'"

As they came out of the apartment building Dean spotted a battered Chevelle parked across the street and walked up to the driver's side door. Bobby Singer slept in the front seat and jumped about a foot when Dean rapped on the window calling out his name.

Eyes blinking owlishly the sleep-deprived hunter rolled down the window and said two words, "Heart attack."

"You know you're in better shape than I am," Dean told him and Bobby smiled.

"Why didn't you come on up?" the brunette with Dean asked him, "I have a nice couch Winchester could have handcuffed you to."

Bobby pushed his hair back and planted his well-worn ball cap on his head. "You must be Angel."

"Yeah," she told him then looked at his car disdainfully, "You think this heap can keep up with my Charger?"

"That depends," he said, "Where we goin'?

"To get Sam," Dean told him, "And no we're not going to stop and see "The Thing"…or get pecan log rolls at Stuckey's."

"I can handle that," Bobby said cranking the Chevelle's engine, a broad smile on his face.


	13. Chapter 13

In the parking lot of Gehennam's Dean ran his hand lovingly over the trunk lid of the Impala before he opened it. Leaning in he rummaged around for something hidden deep within the well, an innocuous item that no one would think twice about while Angel waited patiently, checking the classic shotgun she'd pulled from the rack in the trunk of the Dodge. It was a Winchester 1897 pump that held six shells. Dean came over to her, his sawed off shotgun in his hand and a flask of holy water shoved in his jacket pocket, and, looking at the small leather bag he presumed held the money she'd been paid for Sam, he asked, "You think he's just gonna take his money back and give us Sam?"

"Probably not," Angel said with a embarrassed almost sad smile. Money didn't mean anything to Mammon. All he was interested in was death, destruction and a person's everlasting soul.

"You could have at least sugar coated it for us," Bobby suggested hefting Ruby's demon killing knife as he joined them.

Angel glanced at the knife. "Keep that close but I don't know if it'll do any good."

"Last I heard it would kill any demon," Bobby assured her.

"Mammon's a higher demon of some sort," she told him, "No theatrics of any kind and he's got hell on speed dial. I can't tell about his sidekick though. I've never seen anything from her but gross stupidity…when she's around."

Bobby looked at Dean expectantly and Dean looked back at Bobby and said, "What?"

The older hunter was looking at him as if he could help but, as far as Dean Winchester knew, he couldn't spot a demon lurking inside a human...although it would be almost as bitchin' as his newfound skill as a hellhound wrangler…and maybe it wouldn't be as excruciatingly painful.

Angel looked at the two of them, both grim with determination and, if sheer determination were enough to go up against Mammon, they'd have it knocked. But as they headed into the building to get Sam, she knew it wasn't.

"Where is he?" Angel demanded walking into the office and over to Summar's desk, resting the butt of the 87 on her hip.

"Out," Summar told her eyeing Dean like a piece of candy. The redhead then cast a cursory look in Bobby's direction and he kept his distance for good reason when she said under her breath, "You can run but you can't hide, old man."

Pretending she didn't hear what Summar had said Angel told her, "I've come to break my contract," and held up the moneybag.

"What?" the redhead asked stupidly reaching out to touch Dean.

"She's got sellers remorse," he spat out and took a step back out of her reach.

Summar's eyes widened. "Oh, you want Sammy back," she said and looked at the bounty hunter for confirmation.

Angel rolled her eyes and Summar lost all interest in Dean. "I'll see if I can find him...Mammon I mean," she said with a flip of her hair. Walking toward the door at the rear of the room Summar started to laugh.

The sound of it left him cold and Dean wondered aloud, "Is it too late? Is Sammy even here?"

"I don't know," Angel told him truthfully.

Mammon always gave his bounty hunter time enough to reclaim her bounties, be they hunter or hunted, sometimes by torturing them right in front of her but he could never reach her, never make her care one way or the other. She had no compassion, no pity, all the more reason for him to love her and he smiled when he came to the doorway and saw her again. "Sam Winchester's avenging angel," he said coming out of the shadows, his ice blue eyes shinning brightly and, when he spotted Dean standing behind her, he added, "Hiding behind a woman's skirts, Dean? Shame on you."

"Listen Yao Ming…" Dean started but was hushed by Angel.

"Dean, don't," she warned him under her breath. She knew his prickly male pride would get him into more trouble than he could handle at this point. "I'm here to negate my last contract," she declared.

Mammon didn't seem surprised or to particularly care and he moved closer to her, close enough to reach out and touch her. "Of course you are," he said and lifted a strand of her hair and rubbed it between his fingers. Angel stepped back, her hair sliding free, and he brought his fingers to his mouth and licked them.

Dean swore under his breath, "Jesus Christ, Angel."

Mammon just snickered and turned his back to them, seemingly disinterested, only to turn back when Dean said, "We got your money, now where's my brother?" Dean wanted to get it done and get gone. He didn't trust anyone in the room. Hell, he didn't trust anyone within a hundred miles of the room, especially Angel. But he had to play it her way for now and, if things started to suck ass, then he and Bobby would go it alone. He watched intently as Angel looked at Mammon.

After exchanging another long look with stretch she dropped the cash bag at his feet and stated, "Sam Winchester."

"Summar, bring out our…guest," Mammon ordered as he continued to stare at Angel…lovingly.

Summar led Sam into the room and Dean realized his brother was in a bad way, in worse shape than even he had been after Declan and Duncan had Riverdanced on him. Sam was doubled over with pain; his gate an old man's shuffle and his clothes were burned, torn and covered in filth.

"Stop it!" Angel shouted at Summar and aimed the shotgun at her.

Seconds later relief flooded Sam's face as the pain in his gut stopped for the first time in days. He smiled weakly at his brother before he realized that Angel was responsible for stopping his suffering and he frowned. "What's **she** doing here?"

"Just conducting some business, Sammy," Dean assured him keeping his eyes on the office manager from hell, "and as soon as we're out of here, you can kick her ass."

Angel snorted a laugh and Sam saw it immediately. Dean had slept with her. They were now allies of some sort. He would have liked it better if things had remained status quo… although Dean screwing her probably was status quo. His brother would never learn.

Ditzy redhead? Definitely a demon. Stretch? Oh, hell yes. But Angel? Bobby saw the hatred in Sam's eyes and chalked it up to the fact that she had sold him to the Johnny Winter look alike.

Mammon started to move around the room driving Dean to distraction while Summar continued to hold tightly to Sam's arm rubbing her breast against his bicep. Angel stepped forward to cut off the tall demon's forward motion and Mammon's eyes flared. Dean's lips twitched and a tick started in his eyelid as he watched Angel and the demon stare at one another.

Who would be the first to blink? Dean bet Mammon's baby blues could pin her to the wall any time he chose but the demon just continued to smile, or smirk, at her, the two of them seemingly oblivious to everyone else in the room. Whatever it was it was an obscene seduction and it made Dean want to turn away. It was also the proverbial car wreck and so he stared.

Mammon toed the moneybag out of the way and leaned in and grabbed the back of Angel's head. Threading his fingers through her hair, holding her painfully in his grip, he pulled her close, his lips a fraction of an inch from hers. Angel smelled his sulfurous breath as he opened his mouth to kiss her.

It was an orgasm of pain and pleasure and, dropping the shotgun, she was kissing him back hungrily while the others, including Summar, watched in grim silence as the couple made a half turn, feet no longer touching the floor. Dean could see Angel's face over the demon's shoulder and when she opened her eyes, they were as blue as the sky.

"Enough's enough," Dean spat out and suggested angrily, "Let's get the fuck out of here." In his mind and for all intents and purposes the deal was concluded and Dean meant for the four of them to go. He jerked his head at Sam and his brother pulled his arm free of Summar's grasp and took unsteady steps toward him. "Angel!" Dean barked out taking a step toward her.

Sam stepped in to cut him off. He grabbing his brother's shoulders and hung on to him. "He's not letting her go," Sam told Dean and added, "Or us."

Mammon smiled at them in silent agreement.

"You got your money!" Dean shouted at the demon, trying to break the hold Sam had on him, "Now, I'm taking Sam outta here and she's going with us."

Mammon laughed as Sam pulled Dean toward Bobby. The hunter held the knife tightly in one hand and the doorknob in the other and explained, "It's not that she can't leave, Dean...it's that she won't."

Mammon took a deep, feted breath and continued, "She works for me. Brings me who or what I want, when I want, no questions asked and I pay her well. I told her where to find the demon that possessed her husband, where she could find the hunters who killed him. She owes me"

"She must have paid you back by now," Dean insisted.

Mammon agreed. "Many times over but she learned the hard way that revenge, a dish once eaten, can never ease the hunger for those lost."

"This is jacked!" Dean said angrily trying to pull away from his brother's tenacious grip. Sam yanked him back, harder this time and Dean ground out, "Let me go!"

"Dude, she's not gonna go," Sam said as plainly and as forcefully as he could, "because she's...with him."

Confused, Dean asked, "They're dating?"

If Bobby could have reached him he would have smacked him in the back of the head.

Sam just sighed. "She's a demon and she didn't just kill her kids, she sacrificed them."

Stunned, Dean turned to look first at Sam, who had spoken what may be the truth, then Mammon and then finally Angel, whose eyes shown with confused anguish and pain.

"What are you talking about?" she asked. She turned to Sam then cried plaintively to Dean. "I had no choice! You've seen my legs, the scars. When the hellhounds were done with me they were going after my children. I couldn't …"

"Enough!" Mammon's voice rang out and the room fell silent, "Demon, such a generic term. I prefer fallen angel myself."

"Bullshit for the win," Dean snarked and Mammon shot him a withering look.

"They are here among you, have been since the dawn of creation," Mammon told his audience.

"Among us? I thought they ruled in hell?" Bobby said waiting for Mammon to enlightened him.

"Refusing to bow before mankind but envious nonetheless, many of the Fallen want to be human so badly that, when they finally climb out of the pit, they get married, raise a family, get a mortgage, create their own little hell on earth."

"And what? Pretend everything's okay while the world goes to hell?"

"In the proverbial hand basket, Dean," Mammon said turning his frosty gaze on the elder Winchester, "But they don't pretend. Sometimes they just simply forget."

Sam and Dean both stared dumbfounded at the new insight Mammon had given them, as did Angel. Bobby took it all in as well, confirming something he'd suspected for a long time. Absolutely nothing is ever Goddamned as it seems and he watched as Angel's hair reverted to vibrant blonde right before his eyes. She looked like Mammon's twin as they stood together.

"So why didn't the hellhounds drag you back to hell where you belong? Why didn't they finish what they started?"

Angel looked at Dean and spoke flatly as if coming out of a decades long fog and answered his question, "Because Lilith got what she wanted."

Her answer was heartbreaking but when Dean searched Angel's face he saw only the Angel of a few days before, hard and unfathomable.

Bobby Singer saw it differently. She hadn't known what she was, hadn't remembered at all until now and he said aloud in the silent room, "Lilith. Destroyer of men, killer of children."


	14. Chapter 14

Angel took a few minutes to gather her wits about her, to recall her vast knowledge of heaven and hell and to collect her anger. Mammon watched her and waited to see what she would do. Whether she would reject or embrace what she was, a fallen angel, just as he was. Stronger than all demons except for the one they had chosen to follow, Lucifer. Looking around the room Angel quickly marked where each was including Summar and she turned to stare at the red haired demon with her blue eyes fever bright and the girl shifted uncomfortably.

Bobby Singer had inched closer to the group and was moving ever so slightly from side to side on the balls of his feet in nervous anticipation. _Just like an old warrior,_ Angel thought, intent on his enemy, ignoring the two brothers who would foolishly sacrifice themselves for one another.

"So you're gonna blame it all on some creepy assed little kid," Dean flung out nastily.

"You don't know jack about Lilith," Angel countered just as unkindly.

"I know she can't touch Sam."

"But she set the hounds on you, didn't she," Angel retorted and watched with satisfaction as the color drained from Dean's face when he heard the faint but unmistakable throaty growl and smelled the sulfurous odor of hellhound, "And she can do it again."

The room grew quiet and they all breathed a sigh of relief but their respite was short lived as the growling started back up again six fold. Sam and the others looked around, searching for the sources and they seemed to be surrounded by the creatures.

The growling started to get louder with each passing moment until it grew cacophonous and Mammon shouted, "Enough!" but still the hellhounds snarled.

In the interim Dean had started to ease his way over to Sam and together they started toward the door. Dean thought that they might have a chance if they could just make it out of the building but, instead of following suit and heading for the door, Bobby was closing in on Summar who stood with her back to the wall, eyes wide with fear.

Mammon's eyes blazed furiously at the deafening noise and slobber from invisible muzzles started to dot the floor. He turned to his assistant and bellowed out her real name, "Lilith, enough!"

"It's not me!" she screamed and, seconds before Bobby's knife plunged deep into the redhead's heart, the black smoke that was Lilith spewed forth and quickly escaped out a vent in the old tin ceiling.

The hellhounds quieted to some degree and Mammon realized just who had brought them forth. He turned vicious eyes on Dean who just smiled in return.

"Let's go," Dean said to Sam and Bobby. He hoped to hell he could make it out to the car before the pain became any worse, crippling him, but Angel was having none of his theatrics. She raised a hand and the force of her power slammed him back into the wall.

Dean hit hard and the wind was knocked out of him and he slid down into a sitting position. Trying to rid his brain of the fog that now enveloped it, Dean shook his head while Angel held her hand up in front of her face. She turned it, looking first at the palm then at the back, savoring her long forgotten and dormant powers. She smiled as Mammon looked on, the importer relieved that the hellhounds had been finally forced to retreat.

"And for my next trick," Angel said and pointed at Sam.

The young hunter doubled over, dry heaving, as red-hot pain roiled in his guts.

"Cut the crap, Angel and let him go!" Dean got clumsily to his feet, reeling like a drunkard.

"I will," she agreed readily, "but you have something I want. Something you stole before using your get out of hell free card."

Dean's hand went immediately to the object he had taken from the Impala's trunk, the two thousand year old artifact that he had stuck in a cobbled together leather sheath and shoved down the back of his jeans. It was an iron spike that he had picked up from the rocky, barren, unbearably hot and vicious terrain where he'd lain and that, according to Angel, was hell. The ten-inch nail was the real end game. Angel didn't care, probably never did, about helping him or freeing Sam. She only cared about getting her hands on the rusted piece of metal but he wouldn't give it up without a fight. He couldn't just turn it over to her because, for whatever reason, it was important and he knew he could use it to save their lives.

"No, no way!" Dean pulled the spike out and held it in front of him like a switchblade.

"I'm betting you're not quick enough with it," Angel guessed, "You can only get one of us."

"Well, then I guess it's you, Angel cakes."

"That's a very good choice...because if I'm left standing I'll make sure your baby brother dies first, right in front of you. Then the old man," she assured him.

Dean wanted to do it. He wanted to stab her in her black heart just to watch her die but maybe, if he bargained; turned it over to her in exchange for Sam and Bobby, she might just let them walk away.

"What's it gonna be, Dean?" she asked and turned bright blue eyes to Sam.

He started to scream, blood bubbled from between his lips and he turned terrified eyes on Dean not sure he should, or even if he could, draw on his fledgling powers to stop her.

"Okay, okay. Wait!" Dean said and held out his hand in supplication hoping to buy a second or two to think of a way out without giving up the nail.

Suddenly Bobby started to sputter and choke on the blood that started to drip from his nose and mouth.

"God damn it!" Dean cursed and held the nail out, "You're beyond fucked up, you know that?" His spoke to her through teeth clamped so tightly that he thought his bruised and beaten jaw might actually crack, his impotence firing his fury.

Angel walked over to stand in front of him and smiled. She ran a fingernail down the side of his face and blood erupted where she touched him. Dean could feel it run down his face but felt no pain other than that of his pulsating hellhound scars. "Let him go," he whispered, "Please."

She continued to smile at him, taunt him then turned her back on the Winchesters. She walked back to Mammon, the spike held loosely in her hand and when the demon finally saw it up close, his eyes lit up.

"The nail from His cross," Mammon said reverently, "I wasn't sure it existed." He reached out to take what he believed to be his due but Angel held onto it and just stared at him. He reached for it again and demanded, "Give it to me."

Angel held it just out of his reach and asked him, "It was you, wasn't it?" It was more of a statement than a question and it brought Mammon up short. "You sent the demon to possess my husband."

Mammon spit out a laugh and said mockingly, "Your husband? You are an angel and yet you defile yourself with humans." He waved his hand to encompass Sam, Dean and Bobby. "The war is here and yet you forget just what you are and who you serve," he continued ranting.

"And my children?" she asked calmly.

"Casualties of this war and of your covetousness, you avarice."

"But they were innocent."

"All humans are born with sin, some more than others," his gaze and meaning was directed toward Sam and not lost on Bobby or Dean.

Angel's eyes moved to look at Sam Winchester and she could see him clearly for the first time. She could see his power, his shining light and his dark destiny and, using only her finger, she pulled him toward her. "Do you think it will work on angels, fallen or otherwise?" she asked Sam as she wrapped her hand around the sharpened iron nail, "I guess there's only one way to find out."

Before Sam could even take a breath to speak to her or jump out of the way, Angel turned and plunged the spike deep into Mammon's eye. The angel just stood watching her with his remaining nearly opaque blue eye and when he didn't react, she knew it hadn't worked, that the nail was useless and she bowed her head.

Suddenly Mammon screamed and it was deafening and he pitched backward to fall writhing on the floor. With hands to ears, the four of them watched him in stunned silence as he screamed again and again, each bellow growing weaker and weaker until he was finally still. Taking advantage of the situation Bobby moved in to pluck the nail from the eye but when he wrapped his hand around it the skin on his palm started to char and peel away. He dropped it to the floor.

In a vain attempt to retrieve it Dean lurched toward where it had fallen but Angel simply held out her shiny new hand of death and he was back on his ass, pain shooting through the back of his head where he'd connected with the wall.

As he looked on with trepidation, Angel spoke two words. "My children." She took in a breath and levitated the spike back up into her hand. She closed her eyes and, with one fluid and completely unexpected motion, placed the tip of the spike against her breast and pushed, sending it's sharp point toward her heart. Angel fell to the floor and blood gushed from the wound in her chest but she continued to breath. Sam came forward to stand over her and started to recite the exorcism to send her soul to hell and she closed her eyes, a serene smile on her face.

"Shut up, Sam!" Dean shouted.

Sam stopped for a moment then continued to chant.

"I mean it, Sammy," Dean warned him in a voice colder and more threatening than Bobby had ever heard it before.

They had to send her back into the pit and he said, "We gotta do it, boy," but Dean was no longer listening.

He knelt down beside Angel and spoke softly to her. "Thank you…for my brother," he whispered. Dean looked into her eyes and saw the plea therein and placed his full weight on the head of the nail and pushed until he heard the tip of it hit the floor beneath her and he knew she was gone. He pulled the nail from her body and stood up, tears streaming down his face.

Sam, shocked at Dean's obvious emotional attachment to the fallen angel, said, "Dude, I didn't know you cared that much about…"

His brother cut him off sharply. "I don't give a flying fuck about her," Dean said and he held out his hand to Sam and wiggled his fingers and demanded, "My keys."

Wiping the blood from his chin with one hand and fishing the keys from his jeans pocket with the other, Sam held them out but refused to hand them over right away. He had a question that he wanted answered first. "Why didn't you let me send her back to hell?"

Whether in sorrow or in anger Dean's lip quivered and he answered him. "Because just like your buddy Ruby said ...I wouldn't wish hell on my worst enemy."

Both Sam and Bobby stepped back as if Dean had delivered a physical punch to them.

_He knows what hell's like. He remembers_, Bobby thought and was suddenly terrified for John's oldest son and wondered what was going through Dean's mind as Sam handed over the keys but the boy only picked up the spike and shoved it back into the sheath and started for the door. "Dean!" Bobby shouted but Dean kept on walking.

Sam could only watched helplessly, completely at a loss as to what to say to keep his brother from leaving, and blurted out, "What about the money? What about her car?"

"I'm not gonna pick her bones!" Dean said in a cold voice and, with those final words, he was out the door and gone.

Bobby and Sam stood in the ominous silence, knee deep in fallen angels and after a few moments, one body decomposed into a stinking puddle of primordial goo and the other brightened blindingly and faded away.


	15. Chapter 15

Mammon's decomposing corpse was like nothing Bobby or Sam had ever seen or smelled before. Noxious fumes quickly spread out over the office area forcing them to leave everything behind and take refuge in the parking lot. The two of them stood between Bobby's Chevelle and Angel's Charger, Dean's 'bone picking' comment still fresh in their minds.

"Ah, can you give me a ride?" Sam finally asked.

Bobby, glancing at the Charger, decided it best to leave it intact and right where it was. "Sure, but where to?"

"Back to Angel's."

When they got there Dean was in the bedroom face down on Angel's bed, asleep. It looked to Sam as if he'd come through the door, dropped his backpack and his brown leather jacket on the bedroom floor and had fallen directly onto the bed. Noticing the handcuffs hung on the headboard, Sam just shook his head and backed quietly out of the room closing the door behind him.

Twelve hours later Dean woke to the sound of murmured voices and the smell of pizza. He felt almost human again...or as human as he was ever going to feel. The pizza beckoned and he walked in on Sam, his brother's nose buried in his laptop, and Bobby, his nose buried in a book.

"Dean, I looked her up," Sam said shoving the pizza box toward him.

"Don't tell me. She's on facebook," he said groggily and reached for a piece.

Sam shot him a look of annoyance. "It's a blog but she seems to have only written when the mood struck her. The first entry is a little over three years ago." Sam read while Dean ate.

Bobby turned another page in his book and looked up when Sam spoke.

"Her name was Laurel Hunt. She and her husband Randy owned a tattoo parlor in Madison, Wisconsin. One day people started coming in with a specific design they wanted him to ink. This is the symbol."

Sam spun the computer and Dean looked at a plain looking circle with a black dot to the left hand side. There was what looked like a broken arrow pointing left and a knitting needle pointing right. "That would be some seriously crappy ink," Dean deemed.

Sam ignored him again and continued. "The Seal of the Left Hand Path indicates black magic and the path to the devil," he read aloud and then looked back up at Dean.

"So they were tattooing some Dungeons and Dragons geeks," he said playing devil's advocate.

"These weren't geeks, Dean. She says that their clientele changed overnight. Men and women came from all over requesting that one tattoo. They were stone cold killers, thieves, drug dealers and addicts. Dirty cops and AWOL soldiers in uniform, meth tweaking soccer moms and lawyers in expensive suits."

"In other words the scum of the earth," Dean said then asked, "So you think Randy's demon was a recruiter for the bad guys."

"Looks as if," Bobby said standing to look over Sam's shoulder.

"But why mark 'em?" Dean wanted to know, "So they'd recognize each other at the annual demon convention? A super secret handshake isn't good enough?"

"The path to Satan," Sam repeated thoughtfully, "It could be a way to call 'em all together when they're needed."

"Demonic GPS ink? Your thought process is really creeping me out, Sammy."

"Maybe it's like the mark on the doors in the Bible. The way to tell who gets smited and who doesn't, depending on who's doing the smiting," Bobby suggested and they grew quiet.

Sam, intent on the laptop, read further while Dean absently thumbed through a photo album that had been left laying on the coffee table. He stopped and pulled one of the photos out of its sleeve. It was a family photograph of the Hunt family in happier times. He turned it over and it read, 'Laurel, Randy, Sean, Lane, Lacy and Zipper'. Zipper must have been the huge golden retriever lying all over the kids when the picture was taken. It was a perfect Kodak moment, everyone with smiles on their faces and love in their eyes and Dean would have been envious if he hadn't know how everything had turned out. "Do you think her kids were scared?" he asked absently.

Bobby kept quiet and Sam didn't answer right away, his mind's eye on the slowly twisting doorknob in one of the seedy motel rooms their father had parked them in while he hunted demons, werewolves and the likes.

"Every second they were with her," Sam assured him.

Dean just looked at his brother with a jaundiced eye then stopped when he saw he was dead serious.

"Sometimes I was so scared," Sam continued, "that I wished the monsters would just come through the door and eat me so I could get it over with and wouldn't have to be scared anymore."

Dean looked at his younger brother and squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. "I never let anything happen to you, bro."

Sam smiled crookedly. "I know."

"I didn't want to have to clean up any monster puke," Dean said with a straight face, "You were all spindly and bony and wouldn't have gone down easy."

Sam snorted and smiled. He then grew serious again. "We were just lucky, Dean."

"As kids, yeah. As adults...not so much." Dean thought of how they hadn't exactly cheated death and looked at the family photograph again. _Yeah, they were probably scared_, he thought, but if there is a God in heaven and if he was merciful, he let those kids sleep peacefully, oblivious to the monstrousness of the hellhound attack and unaware of the gunshots.

Dean didn't want to think about the kids anymore or about Lilith and he especially didn't want to think about Angel. What he wanted to do was take a shower and sleep for another 12 hours.


	16. Chapter 16

Walking into the large bathroom Dean headed straight for the mirror and checking out his reflection breathed a sigh of relief. He knew they were there but out of sight out of mind...and not white hot with pain was a good thing. _Dodged another bullet_, he thought thankfully until he stepped out of the shower and began to towel off his back. He felt the pain and backed up to the mirrored wall expecting to see only faded bruises left by the Brothers Grimm or a love bite left by Angel. Instead he saw the vague outline of a raise symbol, like a brand. The Seal of the Left Hand Path. "Sammy! Sam!" he shouted out and both Sam and Bobby came running. "I don't know how she did it but she marked me." Dean pointed over his shoulder to his reflection in the mirror. "It's the Goddamn seal!"

Sam turned his brother bodily and ran his fingers over the raised skin.

"She's lumped me in with the dregs." Dean thought it was fitting, with him newly released from hell and all, but he still took offense.

"Dude, wait a minute," Sam cautioned him, "It's only the Left Hand Seal when you look in the mirror. It's completely reversed on your back."

"The Seal of the Right Hand Path?"

"Maybe," Bobby told him, "If there's one thing I've learned in this crazy business is that there's always a flip side. Look at Angel. Cast from heaven because she wouldn't serve man. Condemned to hell or to wonder the earth until judgment day or until the day she'd willingly kneel before humans."

Dean contorted to look over his shoulder again at the seal and said, "The only reason Angel would kneel before me would be to tie my boot laces together or to give me a blow job."

"Dean!" Bobby said incredulously, "Angel was well on her way to salvation when Lilith tricked her into killing her own flesh and blood. The bitch couldn't let Angel put those kids' welfare before her own."

"And you think avenging her kids opened up the pearly gates?" Sam deduced.

"I figure that...and serving mankind," Bobby told them and the silence of the unanswered question stretched out before them. With a huge theatrical sigh he told them, "It was you two ijits."

Sam didn't buy it. "No, no way. She brought us right to Mammon and would have left us both there to die."

"I know all that but in the end she put that miserable son of a bitch out of his misery. She not only paid the bastard back in spades but she killed him so you two, so all of us, could walk away."

"And to repay her I helped her die," Dean said starting to second guessing himself and wondered if things could get anymore screwed up than they already were in his relatively short life?

"Yeah, you did but you also stopped us from sending her back to hell. She went out with a bright light and not a putrid smellin' gurgle so I'm guessing she's back up in heaven where she started," Bobby surmised and then added, "And when exactly were you gonna to tell us about the nail from Christ's cross?"

"Right after you grew a set and told me that I died and went to hell." Dean turned on his heel and walked out of the bathroom.

Dressed in jeans and a black tee shirt, Dean sat on the couch unfolding another map. He spread it out on the coffee table and pointed to a city. "Here's the quickest way to Davenport," he said, absently massaging his left shoulder. He knew Sam could just mapquest it and find a route that would cut off at least a hundred miles but instead of turning on the laptop, Sam just leaned back and looked at his brother. Dean could tell Sam wanted to say something and that he probably wasn't going to like it.

"Dean," Sam started then stopped, at a loss for words.

"Sammy, its okay," Dean said, "We need to talk it out, get things back to the way they used to be. I…"

"Dude, stop!" Sam said so forcefully that Bobby lifted up his head.

Sam shot him a pleading look for privacy but Bobby just stared him down. He was family and if you couldn't air your dirty laundry in front of family, then who could you?

"Things can't go back to the way they were," Sam told him, then explained, "You were gone for four months and things were…aren't the same."

"Yeah, I know but we've been good since then, Abby the vampire, the blackbirds..."

"No! We haven't been good."

Dean closed his mouth, his heart hammering in his chest. Sam was right. When they were alone together they just went through the motions, him especially, trying to keep it together, trying to keep his personal demons at bay while trying to figure out just what had happened to him. "Come on. We're always good," Dean chided Sam all the same, "We're brothers."

Sam took a deep breath and, instead of finding just the right words, he blurted out, "You're still my brother but I can't love you any more. You weren't just gone for four months...you were _dead_ and I never, ever want to feel that way again, do the things I did…"

"Dude, you won't loose me…"

"Don't even say it, Dean. Don't lie to me anymore!"

One of Dean's demons, possibly his 'failure to accept rejection' demon, got right up in his face and he spit out, "What things did you do, Sammy? Did you hook up with another hell hottie and throw a few chicken bones between bangs. Did you pin a few demons to the wall before you offed 'em?"

"Dean," Bobby said in a warning voice and reminded him, "Son, I saw your handiwork back at that cabin."

Dean backed away from the two of them hoping a little distance might keep his anger in check and the hellhounds at bay. That he could keep Bobby and Sam safe from whatever else he didn't know he could do.

"I wanted to use my powers back there at the warehouse, even as far back as the day you first came back, but I couldn't. I promised you...but I can't keep that promise. Couldn't keep it," Sam corrected.

"It was only four months, Sammy," Dean said, disappointment in his voice.

"Four month's a hell of a long time when you think someone's dead. I moved on. I had no choice."

Dean shook his head, snorted a laugh then grew agitated. "Four months is pretty relative, bro, because there's no day in hell. No night, no week, no months, no years. There's just hell. I called for you, Sammy. I called for you until my throat bled but you never came."

Dean was way out of line and Bobby was fuming. "How was he supposed to come to you? You did everything in your power to keep him here, safe and alive and now you want to make him pay for it?"

"He could have used some of that old black magic and gotten me out sooner."

"You asked me not to…"

"But you did it anyway. Is that how you kept my meat suit from rotting?"

"Sam didn't use his powers," Bobby shouted then said softly, "At least not for that." Both of them turned to him, one with a look of guilt the other with a sneer of anger. "He thought your body was gone, burned up like your Dad's but I buried it hoping no one would ever find it...until I could bring you back."

"Well, somebody found me 'cause Bobby... I'm home."

"I don't know if I brought you back or if Sam brought you back or if God brought you back. Hell, for all I know you just went down the Devil's gullet the wrong way and he spit you back up. But you're here now and a fallen angel's marked you as the right hand of God and, in my book that ain't so bad. So deal with it! Get on with your lives!"

"I'd like to but it seems there's the little issue of Sam's hating me. Maybe I was a little hasty trading my soul."

"I never said I hated you," Sam said softly and Bobby watched as Sam's eyes hardened. The younger Winchester steeled his heart against the most important person in his life and there was nothing he could say or do to stop it. Sam's fear of loosing Dean yet again, his fear of what Dean had become and of what he himself had always been, wound itself painfully around his heart and threatened to smother every other emotion he possessed except for anger. "It's a little late to be having second thoughts about making a bad deal, isn't it, Dean?" Sam asked bitterly.

Dean replied in a flat voice, his words clipped, "Listen up Sammy, if she had only offered me one hour I still would have taken the deal." Dean grabbed up his leather jacket and his car keys and, as an after thought, snatched up the photograph of the Hunt family from the coffee table and walked out the door.

Sam lifted his chin defiantly and sat down on the couch to plan his next move.

Bobby Singer watched it all and shook his head as the Winchester legacy took a heavy toll.

The music in the Impala was turned up loud. There was no one in the car to tell him to turn it down, no one to criticize his choice of songs or his driving and no one to answer to or for. Dean had hunted alone before. For the most part, his father had hunted alone until Dean had come of age and even then, John Winchester would often go out by himself. It was nothing new and, with his newfound furry friends and a weapon of truly lethal proportions, he too would hunt alone...but first he wanted a cheeseburger.

FIN


End file.
